180115
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|Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or|
|no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought |
|I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I |
|have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find  |
|myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in |
|my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, |
|and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my    |
|hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to|
|prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking|
|people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. |
|This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato   |
|throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing     |
|surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some   |
|time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with     |
|me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves   |
|as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and  |
|left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery,      |
|where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few    |
|hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers    |
|there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears  |
|Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you    |
|see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon    |
|thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the       |
|spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of      |
|ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still |
|better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath   |
|and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then   |
|is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more |
|crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! |
|Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under  |
|the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just     |
|as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they       |
|stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys,  |
|streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.     |
|Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those  |
|ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high |
|land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you   |
|down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in |
|it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand |
|that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you     |
|to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in   |
|the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be    |
|supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and |
|water are wedded for ever. But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the   |
|dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all |
|the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his   |
|trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and |
|here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage  |
|goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to  |
|overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the   |
|picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like |
|leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye  |
|were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when|
|for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is    |
|the one charm wanting?--Water--there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara |
|but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did |
|the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver,     |
|deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money|
|in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy  |
|with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why|
|upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical    |
|vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of      |
|land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a  |
|separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.|
|And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could   |
|not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and|
|was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans.    |
|It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it   |
|all. Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin    |
|to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do   |
|not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as |
|a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you    |
|have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick--grow quarrelsome--don't |
|sleep of nights--do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;--no, I never |
|go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as |
|a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of    |
|such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honourable    |
|respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is     |
|quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, |
|barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,--though I    |
|confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on  |
|ship-board--yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;--though once broiled, |
|judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who|
|will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I|
|will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis|
|and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their   |
|huge bake-houses the pyramids. No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor,   |
|right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal |
|mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to |
|spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is   |
|unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come   |
|of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or |
|Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the |
|tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest |
|boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a    |
|schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the     |
|Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time. What |
|of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep    |
|down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the     |
|scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything |
|the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in      |
|that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however  |
|the old sea-captains may order me about--however they may thump and punch me    |
|about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody  |
|else is one way or other served in much the same way--either in a physical or   |
|metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round,|
|and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content. Again,   |
|I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my   |
|trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. |
|On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference|
|in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the    |
|most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But|
|BEING PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man    |
|receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe   |
|money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied   |
|man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition! Finally,|
|I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air  |
|of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent|
|than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim),   |
|so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at   |
|second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; |
|but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many   |
|other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore|
|it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should|
|now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police   |
|officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly     |
|dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way--he can better answer than |
|any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of   |
|the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came    |
|in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.   |
|I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this: "GRAND  |
|CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES. "WHALING VOYAGE     |
|BY ONE ISHMAEL. "BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN." Though I cannot tell why it    |
|was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby   |
|part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in    |
|high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts   |
|in farces--though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall    |
|all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives  |
|which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to    |
|set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that |
|it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating      |
|judgment. Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale|
|himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then |
|the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable,   |
|nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a        |
|thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other |
|men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am  |
|tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden  |
|seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to    |
|perceive a horror, and could still be social with it--would they let me--since  |
|it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one    |
|lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome;     |
|the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits  |
|that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul,    |
|endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded   |
|phantom, like a snow hill in the air. I stuffed a shirt or two into my old      |
|carpet-bag, tucked it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific.  |
|Quitting the good city of old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was   |
|a Saturday night in December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the    |
|little packet for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching that|
|place would offer, till the following Monday. As most young candidates for the  |
|pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark  |
|on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so   |
|doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft,      |
|because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with  |
|that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford  |
|has of late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though     |
|in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was     |
|her great original--the Tyre of this Carthage;--the place where the first dead  |
|American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal |
|whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan?|
|And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put  |
|forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones--so goes the story--to throw at  |
|the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon   |
|from the bowsprit? Now having a night, a day, and still another night following |
|before me in New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became    |
|a matter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a very   |
|dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold and cheerless.|
|I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had sounded my pocket,      |
|and only brought up a few pieces of silver,--So, wherever you go, Ishmael,      |
|said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of a dreary street shouldering my    |
|bag, and comparing the gloom towards the north with the darkness towards the    |
|south--wherever in your wisdom you may conclude to lodge for the night, my dear |
|Ishmael, be sure to inquire the price, and don't be too particular. With halting|
|steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of "The Crossed Harpoons"--but it|
|looked too expensive and jolly there. Further on, from the bright red windows   |
|of the "Sword-Fish Inn," there came such fervent rays, that it seemed to have   |
|melted the packed snow and ice from before the house, for everywhere else the   |
|congealed frost lay ten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,--rather     |
|weary for me, when I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from|
|hard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most miserable plight.|
|Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad |
|glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within. But go |
|on, Ishmael, said I at last; don't you hear? get away from before the door; your|
|patched boots are stopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the|
|streets that took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not |
|the cheeriest inns. Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on    |
|either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. |
|At this hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of the town|
|proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light proceeding from a|
|low, wide building, the door of which stood invitingly open. It had a careless  |
|look, as if it were meant for the uses of the public; so, entering, the first   |
|thing I did was to stumble over an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha,     |
|as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed   |
|city, Gomorrah? But "The Crossed Harpoons," and "The Sword-Fish?"--this, then   |
|must needs be the sign of "The Trap." However, I picked myself up and hearing a |
|loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior door. It seemed the  |
|great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black faces turned round in |
|their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of Doom was beating a book in a   |
|pulpit. It was a negro church; and the preacher's text was about the blackness  |
|of darkness, and the weeping and wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Ishmael, |
|muttered I, backing out, Wretched entertainment at the sign of 'The Trap!'      |
|Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and    |
|heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over   |
|the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet|
|of misty spray, and these words underneath--"The Spouter Inn:--Peter Coffin."   |
|Coffin?--Spouter?--Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But  |
|it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an |
|emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time,   |
|looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as   |
|if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as |
|the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that    |
|here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. It was a |
|queer sort of place--a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and  |
|leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous    |
|wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's      |
|tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one  |
|in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of     |
|that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer--of whose works I  |
|possess the only copy extant--"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou  |
|lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside,    |
|or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on   |
|both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier." True enough,     |
|thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind--old black-letter, thou reasonest|
|well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a   |
|pity they didn't stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a    |
|little lint here and there. But it's too late to make any improvements now.     |
|The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off    |
|a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the       |
|curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings,      |
|he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn-cob into his mouth, and    |
|yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old    |
|Dives, in his red silken wrapper--(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh,        |
|pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let   |
|them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give   |
|me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals. But what thinks     |
|Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up to the grand northern    |
|lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra than here? Would he not far      |
|rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods!     |
|go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost? Now, that     |
|Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the door of Dives,    |
|this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be moored to one of the      |
|Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of  |
|frozen sighs, and being a president of a temperance society, he only drinks     |
|the tepid tears of orphans. But no more of this blubbering now, we are going    |
|a-whaling, and there is plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from  |
|our frosted feet, and see what sort of a place this "Spouter" may be. Entering  |
|that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling     |
|entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some       |
|condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oilpainting so thoroughly    |
|besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you   |
|viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to   |
|it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an   |
|understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows,  |
|that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of    |
|the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint  |
|of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially  |
|by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last   |
|come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether |
|unwarranted. But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,       |
|portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over  |
|three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy,     |
|soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet    |
|was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it  |
|that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself  |
|to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but,   |
|alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.--It's the Black Sea in a midnight  |
|gale.--It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.--It's a blasted   |
|heath.--It's a Hyperborean winter scene.--It's the breaking-up of the icebound  |
|stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous    |
|something in the picture's midst. THAT once found out, and all the rest were    |
|plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish?       |
|even the great leviathan himself? In fact, the artist's design seemed this:     |
|a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many     |
|aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a   |
|Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with  |
|its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing   |
|to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon |
|the three mast-heads. The opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with    |
|a heathenish array of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with    |
|glittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots of human  |
|hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping round like the     |
|segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed mower. You shuddered as you  |
|gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a   |
|death-harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement. Mixed with these    |
|were rusty old whaling lances and harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were   |
|storied weapons. With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years     |
|ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And    |
|that harpoon--so like a corkscrew now--was flung in Javan seas, and run away    |
|with by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The original    |
|iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle sojourning in the body  |
|of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last was found imbedded in the      |
|hump. Crossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way--cut through |
|what in old times must have been a great central chimney with fireplaces all    |
|round--you enter the public room. A still duskier place is this, with such low  |
|ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would     |
|almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling   |
|night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood |
|a long, low, shelf-like table covered with cracked glass cases, filled with     |
|dusty rarities gathered from this wide world's remotest nooks. Projecting from  |
|the further angle of the room stands a dark-looking den--the bar--a rude attempt|
|at a right whale's head. Be that how it may, there stands the vast arched bone  |
|of the whale's jaw, so wide, a coach might almost drive beneath it. Within are  |
|shabby shelves, ranged round with old decanters, bottles, flasks; and in those  |
|jaws of swift destruction, like another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they |
|called him), bustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly    |
|sells the sailors deliriums and death. Abominable are the tumblers into which   |
|he pours his poison. Though true cylinders without--within, the villanous green |
|goggling glasses deceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel   |
|meridians rudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads' goblets.       |
|Fill to THIS mark, and your charge is but a penny; to THIS a penny more; and    |
|so on to the full glass--the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp down for a   |
|shilling. Upon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered     |
|about a table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of SKRIMSHANDER.       |
|I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a      |
|room, received for answer that his house was full--not a bed unoccupied. "But   |
|avast," he added, tapping his forehead, "you haint no objections to sharing a   |
|harpooneer's blanket, have ye? I s'pose you are goin' a-whalin', so you'd better|
|get used to that sort of thing." I told him that I never liked to sleep two in  |
|a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer     |
|might be, and that if he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and   |
|the harpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander further  |
|about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with the half of      |
|any decent man's blanket. "I thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?--you   |
|want supper? Supper'll be ready directly." I sat down on an old wooden settle,  |
|carved all over like a bench on the Battery. At one end a ruminating tar was    |
|still further adorning it with his jack-knife, stooping over and diligently     |
|working away at the space between his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship    |
|under full sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four  |
|or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as    |
|Iceland--no fire at all--the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but   |
|two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up   |
|our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half     |
|frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind--not only meat and|
|potatoes, but dumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in|
|a green box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful manner.|
|"My boy," said the landlord, "you'll have the nightmare to a dead sartainty."   |
|"Landlord," I whispered, "that aint the harpooneer is it?" "Oh, no," said he,   |
|looking a sort of diabolically funny, "the harpooneer is a dark complexioned    |
|chap. He never eats dumplings, he don't--he eats nothing but steaks, and he     |
|likes 'em rare." "The devil he does," says I. "Where is that harpooneer? Is he  |
|here?" "He'll be here afore long," was the answer. I could not help it, but I   |
|began to feel suspicious of this "dark complexioned" harpooneer. At any rate,   |
|I made up my mind that if it so turned out that we should sleep together, he    |
|must undress and get into bed before I did. Supper over, the company went back  |
|to the bar-room, when, knowing not what else to do with myself, I resolved to   |
|spend the rest of the evening as a looker on. Presently a rioting noise was     |
|heard without. Starting up, the landlord cried, "That's the Grampus's crew.     |
|I seed her reported in the offing this morning; a three years' voyage, and a    |
|full ship. Hurrah, boys; now we'll have the latest news from the Feegees." A    |
|tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung open, and in   |
|rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their shaggy watch coats,    |
|and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters, all bedarned and ragged,    |
|and their beards stiff with icicles, they seemed an eruption of bears from      |
|Labrador. They had just landed from their boat, and this was the first house    |
|they entered. No wonder, then, that they made a straight wake for the whale's   |
|mouth--the bar--when the wrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon     |
|poured them out brimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head,   |
|upon which Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he    |
|swore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never mind    |
|of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador, or on the    |
|weather side of an ice-island. The liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it  |
|generally does even with the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they   |
|began capering about most obstreperously. I observed, however, that one of them |
|held somewhat aloof, and though he seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity    |
|of his shipmates by his own sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from    |
|making as much noise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since     |
|the sea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though but    |
|a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I will here     |
|venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six feet in height, with|
|noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I have seldom seen such brawn in|
|a man. His face was deeply brown and burnt, making his white teeth dazzling by  |
|the contrast; while in the deep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences  |
|that did not seem to give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he     |
|was a Southerner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of those  |
|tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When the revelry of   |
|his companions had mounted to its height, this man slipped away unobserved, and |
|I saw no more of him till he became my comrade on the sea. In a few minutes,    |
|however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a |
|huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of "Bulkington! Bulkington! where's |
|Bulkington?" and darted out of the house in pursuit of him. It was now about    |
|nine o'clock, and the room seeming almost supernaturally quiet after these      |
|orgies, I began to congratulate myself upon a little plan that had occurred to  |
|me just previous to the entrance of the seamen. No man prefers to sleep two in  |
|a bed. In fact, you would a good deal rather not sleep with your own brother.   |
|I don't know how it is, but people like to be private when they are sleeping.   |
|And when it comes to sleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a  |
|strange town, and that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely |
|multiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should sleep two   |
|in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep two in a bed at     |
|sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all sleep together in one   |
|apartment, but you have your own hammock, and cover yourself with your own      |
|blanket, and sleep in your own skin. The more I pondered over this harpooneer,  |
|the more I abominated the thought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume  |
|that being a harpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not  |
|be of the tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.    |
|Besides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home and     |
|going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at midnight--how could |
|I tell from what vile hole he had been coming? "Landlord! I've changed my mind  |
|about that harpooneer.--I shan't sleep with him. I'll try the bench here."      |
|"Just as you please; I'm sorry I cant spare ye a tablecloth for a mattress, and |
|it's a plaguy rough board here"--feeling of the knots and notches. "But wait    |
|a bit, Skrimshander; I've got a carpenter's plane there in the bar--wait, I     |
|say, and I'll make ye snug enough." So saying he procured the plane; and with   |
|his old silk handkerchief first dusting the bench, vigorously set to planing    |
|away at my bed, the while grinning like an ape. The shavings flew right and     |
|left; till at last the plane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot.     |
|The landlord was near spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven's sake     |
|to quit--the bed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the     |
|planing in the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up     |
|the shavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in the   |
|middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a brown study.   |
|I now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too short;    |
|but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too narrow, and the    |
|other bench in the room was about four inches higher than the planed one--so    |
|there was no yoking them. I then placed the first bench lengthwise along the    |
|only clear space against the wall, leaving a little interval between, for my    |
|back to settle down in. But I soon found that there came such a draught of cold |
|air over me from under the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at |
|all, especially as another current from the rickety door met the one from the   |
|window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in the immediate  |
|vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the night. The devil fetch    |
|that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn't I steal a march on him--bolt     |
|his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be wakened by the most violent   |
|knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon second thoughts I dismissed it.      |
|For who could tell but what the next morning, so soon as I popped out of the    |
|room, the harpooneer might be standing in the entry, all ready to knock me      |
|down! Still, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of spending  |
|a sufferable night unless in some other person's bed, I began to think that     |
|after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices against this unknown   |
|harpooneer. Thinks I, I'll wait awhile; he must be dropping in before long. I'll|
|have a good look at him then, and perhaps we may become jolly good bedfellows   |
|after all--there's no telling. But though the other boarders kept coming in     |
|by ones, twos, and threes, and going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.      |
|"Landlord! said I, "what sort of a chap is he--does he always keep such late    |
|hours?" It was now hard upon twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with   |
|his lean chuckle, and seemed to be mightily tickled at something beyond my      |
|comprehension. "No," he answered, "generally he's an early bird--airley to bed  |
|and airley to rise--yes, he's the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he   |
|went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on airth keeps him so late,  |
|unless, may be, he can't sell his head." "Can't sell his head?--What sort of a  |
|bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage.   |
|"Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged      |
|this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head     |
|around this town?" "That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him    |
|he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked." "With what?" shouted I.    |
|"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?" "I tell you   |
|what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better stop spinning that    |
|yarn to me--I'm not green." "May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a    |
|toothpick, "but I rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer     |
|hears you a slanderin' his head." "I'll break it for him," said I, now flying   |
|into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's. "It's     |
|broke a'ready," said he. "Broke," said I--"BROKE, do you mean?" "Sartain, and   |
|that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess." "Landlord," said I, going    |
|up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a snow-storm--"landlord, stop whittling.      |
|You and I must understand one another, and that too without delay. I come to    |
|your house and want a bed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that    |
|the other half belongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer,      |
|whom I have not yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and     |
|exasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling towards    |
|the man whom you design for my bedfellow--a sort of connexion, landlord, which  |
|is an intimate and confidential one in the highest degree. I now demand of you  |
|to speak out and tell me who and what this harpooneer is, and whether I shall   |
|be in all respects safe to spend the night with him. And in the first place,    |
|you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if     |
|true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've     |
|no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean, landlord, YOU,     |
|sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself   |
|liable to a criminal prosecution." "Wall," said the landlord, fetching a long   |
|breath, "that's a purty long sarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. |
|But be easy, be easy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin' you of has just  |
|arrived from the south seas, where he bought up a lot of 'balmed New Zealand    |
|heads (great curios, you know), and he's sold all on 'em but one, and that one  |
|he's trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow's Sunday, and it would not do to  |
|be sellin' human heads about the streets when folks is goin' to churches. He    |
|wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as he was goin' out of the door  |
|with four heads strung on a string, for all the airth like a string of inions." |
|This account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed that the|
|landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me--but at the same time what   |
|could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a Saturday night clean into the |
|holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal business as selling the heads of dead  |
|idolators? "Depend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man." "He  |
|pays reg'lar," was the rejoinder. "But come, it's getting dreadful late, you had|
|better be turning flukes--it's a nice bed; Sal and me slept in that ere bed the |
|night we were spliced. There's plenty of room for two to kick about in that bed;|
|it's an almighty big bed that. Why, afore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam|
|and little Johnny in the foot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about   |
|one night, and somehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his|
|arm. Arter that, Sal said it wouldn't do. Come along here, I'll give ye a glim  |
|in a jiffy;" and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards me, offering |
|to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a clock in the corner, |
|he exclaimed "I vum it's Sunday--you won't see that harpooneer to-night; he's   |
|come to anchor somewhere--come along then; DO come; WON'T ye come?" I considered|
|the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small |
|room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost |
|big enough indeed for any four harpooneers to sleep abreast. "There," said the  |
|landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest that did double duty      |
|as a wash-stand and centre table; "there, make yourself comfortable now, and    |
|good night to ye." I turned round from eyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.  |
|Folding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of the most   |
|elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then glanced round the     |
|room; and besides the bedstead and centre table, could see no other furniture   |
|belonging to the place, but a rude shelf, the four walls, and a papered         |
|fireboard representing a man striking a whale. Of things not properly belonging |
|to the room, there was a hammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one    |
|corner; also a large seaman's bag, containing the harpooneer's wardrobe, no     |
|doubt in lieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone  |
|fish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon standing at the |
|head of the bed. But what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close |
|to the light, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to arrive |
|at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it to nothing but  |
|a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little tinkling tags something   |
|like the stained porcupine quills round an Indian moccasin. There was a hole or |
|slit in the middle of this mat, as you see the same in South American ponchos.  |
|But could it be possible that any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat,   |
|and parade the streets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on,|
|to try it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy and    |
|thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious harpooneer had    |
|been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit of glass stuck against |
|the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my life. I tore myself out of it in   |
|such a hurry that I gave myself a kink in the neck. I sat down on the side of   |
|the bed, and commenced thinking about this head-peddling harpooneer, and his    |
|door mat. After thinking some time on the bed-side, I got up and took off my    |
|monkey jacket, and then stood in the middle of the room thinking. I then took   |
|off my coat, and thought a little more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to    |
|feel very cold now, half undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord  |
|said about the harpooneer's not coming home at all that night, it being so very |
|late, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots, and then   |
|blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself to the care of     |
|heaven. Whether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,    |
|there is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not sleep for    |
|a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had pretty nearly made   |
|a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard a heavy footfall in the     |
|passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into the room from under the door.     |
|Lord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal head-peddler. |
|But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word till spoken to.       |
|Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New Zealand head in the other,  |
|the stranger entered the room, and without looking towards the bed, placed his  |
|candle a good way off from me on the floor in one corner, and then began working|
|away at the knotted cords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the    |
|room. I was all eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time |
|while employed in unlacing the bag's mouth. This accomplished, however, he      |
|turned round--when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was of a dark,  |
|purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with large blackish looking  |
|squares. Yes, it's just as I thought, he's a terrible bedfellow; he's been in a |
|fight, got dreadfully cut, and here he is, just from the surgeon. But at that   |
|moment he chanced to turn his face so towards the light, that I plainly saw they|
|could not be sticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They  |
|were stains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this; but|
|soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story of a white    |
|man--a whaleman too--who, falling among the cannibals, had been tattooed by     |
|them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course of his distant voyages,   |
|must have met with a similar adventure. And what is it, thought I, after all!   |
|It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. But then, what  |
|to make of his unearthly complexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about,|
|and completely independent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be |
|nothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot sun's   |
|tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had never been in the|
|South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these extraordinary effects upon |
|the skin. Now, while all these ideas were passing through me like lightning,    |
|this harpooneer never noticed me at all. But, after some difficulty having      |
|opened his bag, he commenced fumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort    |
|of tomahawk, and a seal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old  |
|chest in the middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head--a ghastly   |
|thing enough--and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his hat--a new  |
|beaver hat--when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise. There was no hair |
|on his head--none to speak of at least--nothing but a small scalp-knot twisted  |
|up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now looked for all the world like a  |
|mildewed skull. Had not the stranger stood between me and the door, I would have|
|bolted out of it quicker than ever I bolted a dinner. Even as it was, I thought |
|something of slipping out of the window, but it was the second floor back. I    |
|am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether   |
|passed my comprehension. Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely  |
|nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid|
|of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the   |
|dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game enough just  |
|then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer concerning what seemed    |
|inexplicable in him. Meanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and    |
|at last showed his chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were   |
|checkered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all over the    |
|same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years' War, and just      |
|escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still more, his very legs were   |
|marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs were running up the trunks of young  |
|palms. It was now quite plain that he must be some abominable savage or other   |
|shipped aboard of a whaleman in the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian |
|country. I quaked to think of it. A peddler of heads too--perhaps the heads of  |
|his own brothers. He might take a fancy to mine--heavens! look at that tomahawk!|
|But there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about something   |
|that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me that he must indeed   |
|be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall, or dreadnaught, which he    |
|had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in the pockets, and produced at      |
|length a curious little deformed image with a hunch on its back, and exactly    |
|the colour of a three days' old Congo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at   |
|first I almost thought that this black manikin was a real baby preserved in     |
|some similar manner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it      |
|glistened a good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing  |
|but a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage goes up to  |
|the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board, sets up this little  |
|hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the andirons. The chimney jambs and  |
|all the bricks inside were very sooty, so that I thought this fire-place made a |
|very appropriate little shrine or chapel for his Congo idol. I now screwed my   |
|eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but ill at ease meantime--to   |
|see what was next to follow. First he takes about a double handful of shavings  |
|out of his grego pocket, and places them carefully before the idol; then laying |
|a bit of ship biscuit on top and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled   |
|the shavings into a sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into|
|the fire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed to be |
|scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the biscuit; then    |
|blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite offer of it to the    |
|little negro. But the little devil did not seem to fancy such dry sort of fare  |
|at all; he never moved his lips. All these strange antics were accompanied by   |
|still stranger guttural noises from the devotee, who seemed to be praying in a  |
|sing-song or else singing some pagan psalmody or other, during which his face   |
|twitched about in the most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he |
|took the idol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket  |
|as carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock. All these      |
|queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing him now exhibiting |
|strong symptoms of concluding his business operations, and jumping into bed     |
|with me, I thought it was high time, now or never, before the light was put     |
|out, to break the spell in which I had so long been bound. But the interval I   |
|spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one. Taking up his tomahawk from |
|the table, he examined the head of it for an instant, and then holding it to    |
|the light, with his mouth at the handle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco  |
|smoke. The next moment the light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal,      |
|tomahawk between his teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not    |
|help it now; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.     |
|Stammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him against the   |
|wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might be, to keep quiet, and|
|let me get up and light the lamp again. But his guttural responses satisfied    |
|me at once that he but ill comprehended my meaning. "Who-e debel you?"--he      |
|at last said--"you no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e." And so saying the lighted     |
|tomahawk began flourishing about me in the dark. "Landlord, for God's sake,     |
|Peter Coffin!" shouted I. "Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!" "Speak-e! |
|tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!" again growled the cannibal, while   |
|his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the hot tobacco ashes about   |
|me till I thought my linen would get on fire. But thank heaven, at that moment  |
|the landlord came into the room light in hand, and leaping from the bed I ran   |
|up to him. "Don't be afraid now," said he, grinning again, "Queequeg here       |
|wouldn't harm a hair of your head." "Stop your grinning," shouted I, "and why   |
|didn't you tell me that that infernal harpooneer was a cannibal?" "I thought ye |
|know'd it;--didn't I tell ye, he was a peddlin' heads around town?--but turn    |
|flukes again and go to sleep. Queequeg, look here--you sabbee me, I sabbee--you |
|this man sleepe you--you sabbee?" "Me sabbee plenty"--grunted Queequeg, puffing |
|away at his pipe and sitting up in bed. "You gettee in," he added, motioning    |
|to me with his tomahawk, and throwing the clothes to one side. He really did    |
|this in not only a civil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking  |
|at him a moment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely     |
|looking cannibal. What's all this fuss I have been making about, thought I to   |
|myself--the man's a human being just as I am: he has just as much reason to fear|
|me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a    |
|drunken Christian. "Landlord," said I, "tell him to stash his tomahawk there, or|
|pipe, or whatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will   |
|turn in with him. But I don't fancy having a man smoking in bed with me. It's   |
|dangerous. Besides, I ain't insured." This being told to Queequeg, he at once   |
|complied, and again politely motioned me to get into bed--rolling over to one   |
|side as much as to say--I won't touch a leg of ye." "Good night, landlord," said|
|I, "you may go." I turned in, and never slept better in my life. Upon waking    |
|next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most  |
|loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. The |
|counterpane was of patchwork, full of odd little parti-coloured squares and     |
|triangles; and this arm of his tattooed all over with an interminable Cretan    |
|labyrinth of a figure, no two parts of which were of one precise shade--owing   |
|I suppose to his keeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his    |
|shirt sleeves irregularly rolled up at various times--this same arm of his, I   |
|say, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork quilt. Indeed,|
|partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I could hardly tell it    |
|from the quilt, they so blended their hues together; and it was only by the     |
|sense of weight and pressure that I could tell that Queequeg was hugging me.    |
|My sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a child, I   |
|well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me; whether it was a  |
|reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The circumstance was this. I |
|had been cutting up some caper or other--I think it was trying to crawl up the  |
|chimney, as I had seen a little sweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother |
|who, somehow or other, was all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed       |
|supperless,--my mother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me  |
|off to bed, though it was only two o'clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,   |
|the longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But there     |
|was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the third floor,   |
|undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time, and with a bitter    |
|sigh got between the sheets. I lay there dismally calculating that sixteen      |
|entire hours must elapse before I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours  |
|in bed! the small of my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the |
|sun shining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the streets,   |
|and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse and worse--at      |
|last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my stockinged feet, sought     |
|out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at her feet, beseeching her as a   |
|particular favour to give me a good slippering for my misbehaviour; anything    |
|indeed but condemning me to lie abed such an unendurable length of time. But she|
|was the best and most conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my  |
|room. For several hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than|
|I have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes. At last  |
|I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and slowly waking from  |
|it--half steeped in dreams--I opened my eyes, and the before sun-lit room was   |
|now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my  |
|frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard; but a supernatural  |
|hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, |
|unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely|
|seated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there, frozen  |
|with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet ever thinking   |
|that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid spell would be broken. I|
|knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the  |
|morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months    |
|afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to|
|this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it. Now, take away the awful fear,   |
|and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar,   |
|in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking up and seeing      |
|Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round me. But at length all the past night's events |
|soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the|
|comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm--unlock his bridegroom  |
|clasp--yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught    |
|but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse him--"Queequeg!"--but     |
|his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were  |
|in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch. Throwing aside the       |
|counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were|
|a hatchet-faced baby. A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange |
|house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! "Queequeg!--in the name |
|of goodness, Queequeg, wake!" At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud    |
|and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow    |
|male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in extracting a grunt; and  |
|presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself all over like a Newfoundland     |
|dog just from the water, and sat up in bed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking      |
|at me, and rubbing his eyes as if he did not altogether remember how I came     |
|to be there, though a dim consciousness of knowing something about me seemed    |
|slowly dawning over him. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious |
|misgivings now, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at|
|last, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow, and he   |
|became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon the floor, and by|
|certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that, if it pleased me, he would |
|dress first and then leave me to dress afterwards, leaving the whole apartment  |
|to myself. Thinks I, Queequeg, under the circumstances, this is a very civilized|
|overture; but, the truth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy,    |
|say what you will; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this |
|particular compliment to Queequeg, because he treated me with so much civility  |
|and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness; staring at him from the|
|bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for the time my curiosity getting   |
|the better of my breeding. Nevertheless, a man like Queequeg you don't see every|
|day, he and his ways were well worth unusual regarding. He commenced dressing   |
|at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall one, by the by, and then--still   |
|minus his trowsers--he hunted up his boots. What under the heavens he did it    |
|for, I cannot tell, but his next movement was to crush himself--boots in hand,  |
|and hat on--under the bed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings,   |
|I inferred he was hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety   |
|that I ever heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his     |
|boots. But Queequeg, do you see, was a creature in the transition stage--neither|
|caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized to show off his         |
|outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His education was not yet     |
|completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not been a small degree civilized,|
|he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then,   |
|if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under  |
|the bed to put them on. At last, he emerged with his hat very much dented and   |
|crushed down over his eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as   |
|if, not being much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide      |
|ones--probably not made to order either--rather pinched and tormented him at the|
|first go off of a bitter cold morning. Seeing, now, that there were no curtains |
|to the window, and that the street being very narrow, the house opposite        |
|commanded a plain view into the room, and observing more and more the indecorous|
|figure that Queequeg made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots |
|on; I begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and     |
|particularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He complied, and   |
|then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the morning any Christian would |
|have washed his face; but Queequeg, to my amazement, contented himself with     |
|restricting his ablutions to his chest, arms, and hands. He then donned his     |
|waistcoat, and taking up a piece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table,   |
|dipped it into water and commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see    |
|where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed  |
|corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little |
|on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a    |
|vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks. Thinks I, Queequeg,      |
|this is using Rogers's best cutlery with a vengeance. Afterwards I wondered     |
|the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel the head      |
|of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are     |
|always kept. The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched   |
|out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his  |
|harpoon like a marshal's baton. I quickly followed suit, and descending into the|
|bar-room accosted the grinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice  |
|towards him, though he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter   |
|of my bedfellow. However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too   |
|scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper |
|person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but   |
|let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man |
|that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in     |
|that man than you perhaps think for. The bar-room was now full of the boarders  |
|who had been dropping in the night previous, and whom I had not as yet had a    |
|good look at. They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates,     |
|and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and  |
|harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards;   |
|an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns. You could |
|pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This young fellow's      |
|healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and would seem to smell almost |
|as musky; he cannot have been three days landed from his Indian voyage. That    |
|man next him looks a few shades lighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is |
|in him. In the complexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly  |
|bleached withal; HE doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who could     |
|show a cheek like Queequeg? which, barred with various tints, seemed like the   |
|Andes' western slope, to show forth in one array, contrasting climates, zone    |
|by zone. "Grub, ho!" now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we    |
|went to breakfast. They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become    |
|quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though:   |
|Ledyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch one; of    |
|all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But perhaps the mere |
|crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as Ledyard did, or the taking a   |
|long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in the negro heart of Africa, which     |
|was the sum of poor Mungo's performances--this kind of travel, I say, may not   |
|be the very best mode of attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most    |
|part, that sort of thing is to be had anywhere. These reflections just here     |
|are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the table,  |
|and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small     |
|surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence. And not only that, but|
|they looked embarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without |
|the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas--entire     |
|strangers to them--and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they    |
|sat at a social breakfast table--all of the same calling, all of kindred        |
|tastes--looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been |
|out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these|
|bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen! But as for Queequeg--why, Queequeg |
|sat there among them--at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as  |
|an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer  |
|could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with |
|him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it,      |
|to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards    |
|him. But THAT was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that   |
|in most people's estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly. We    |
|will not speak of all Queequeg's peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee     |
|and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare.    |
|Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public  |
|room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and    |
|smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll. If I had  |
|been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish an individual      |
|as Queequeg circulating among the polite society of a civilized town, that      |
|astonishment soon departed upon taking my first daylight stroll through the     |
|streets of New Bedford. In thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable       |
|seaport will frequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from    |
|foreign parts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners    |
|will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not unknown to    |
|Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live Yankees have often |
|scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water Street and Wapping. In      |
|these last-mentioned haunts you see only sailors; but in New Bedford, actual    |
|cannibals stand chatting at street corners; savages outright; many of whom yet  |
|carry on their bones unholy flesh. It makes a stranger stare. But, besides the  |
|Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians, and Brighggians, and,    |
|besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft which unheeded reel about the   |
|streets, you will see other sights still more curious, certainly more comical.  |
|There weekly arrive in this town scores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire   |
|men, all athirst for gain and glory in the fishery. They are mostly young,      |
|of stalwart frames; fellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop       |
|the axe and snatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains    |
|whence they came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old.      |
|Look there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat and     |
|swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife. Here comes    |
|another with a sou'-wester and a bombazine cloak. No town-bred dandy will       |
|compare with a country-bred one--I mean a downright bumpkin dandy--a fellow     |
|that, in the dog-days, will mow his two acres in buckskin gloves for fear of    |
|tanning his hands. Now when a country dandy like this takes it into his head    |
|to make a distinguished reputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you      |
|should see the comical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking  |
|his sea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his canvas  |
|trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those straps in the first  |
|howling gale, when thou art driven, straps, buttons, and all, down the throat   |
|of the tempest. But think not that this famous town has only harpooneers,       |
|cannibals, and bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is  |
|a queer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would this   |
|day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of Labrador. As it   |
|is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten one, they look so bony.    |
|The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England. It |
|is a land of oil, true enough: but not like Canaan; a land, also, of corn and   |
|wine. The streets do not run with milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them|
|with fresh eggs. Yet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find    |
|more patrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford.|
|Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country? Go    |
|and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty mansion, and    |
|your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens |
|came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were      |
|harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander  |
|perform a feat like that? In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for    |
|dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises    |
|a-piece. You must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,  |
|they have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly burn     |
|their lengths in spermaceti candles. In summer time, the town is sweet to see;  |
|full of fine maples--long avenues of green and gold. And in August, high in     |
|air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the  |
|passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is|
|art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces   |
|of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation's final day.   |
|And the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But roses    |
|only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks is perennial   |
|as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that bloom of theirs, ye    |
|cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young girls breathe such musk,    |
|their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off shore, as though they were drawing|
|nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of the Puritanic sands. In this same New      |
|Bedford there stands a Whaleman's Chapel, and few are the moody fishermen,      |
|shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who fail to make a Sunday visit  |
|to the spot. I am sure that I did not. Returning from my first morning stroll,  |
|I again sallied out upon this special errand. The sky had changed from clear,   |
|sunny cold, to driving sleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of   |
|the cloth called bearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering,|
|I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and       |
|widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the   |
|storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as |
|if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable. The chaplain had not yet  |
|arrived; and there these silent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing |
|several marble tablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side|
|the pulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not pretend|
|to quote:-- SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen,   |
|was lost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, November 1st,   |
|1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER. _____________ SACRED  |
|TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN, WALTER CANNY, SETH |
|MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats' crews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who   |
|were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the Off-shore Ground in the PACIFIC,     |
|December 31st, 1839. THIS MARBLE Is here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.   |
|_____________ SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in    |
|the bows of his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, AUGUST  |
|3d, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW. Shaking off        |
|the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated myself near the door,     |
|and turning sideways was surprised to see Queequeg near me. Affected by the     |
|solemnity of the scene, there was a wondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in  |
|his countenance. This savage was the only person present who seemed to notice my|
|entrance; because he was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was   |
|not reading those frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives |
|of the seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation, I knew|
|not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery, and so plainly    |
|did several women present wear the countenance if not the trappings of some     |
|unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here before me were assembled those, in  |
|whose unhealing hearts the sight of those bleak tablets sympathetically caused  |
|the old wounds to bleed afresh. Oh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green  |
|grass; who standing among flowers can say--here, HERE lies my beloved; ye know  |
|not the desolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in those|
|black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in those immovable    |
|inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden infidelities in the lines that     |
|seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse resurrections to the beings who have    |
|placelessly perished without a grave. As well might those tablets stand in the  |
|cave of Elephanta as here. In what census of living creatures, the dead of      |
|mankind are included; why it is that a universal proverb says of them, that     |
|they tell no tales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how  |
|it is that to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix    |
|so significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if he but   |
|embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the Life Insurance    |
|Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what eternal, unstirring     |
|paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty    |
|round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those   |
|who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the     |
|living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking    |
|in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their     |
|meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these  |
|dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. It needs scarcely to be told,      |
|with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble   |
|tablets, and by the murky light of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of  |
|the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine.  |
|But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance   |
|for promotion, it seems--aye, a stove boat will make me an immortal by brevet.  |
|Yes, there is death in this business of whaling--a speechlessly quick chaotic   |
|bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken|
|this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on   |
|earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are|
|too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that    |
|thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better  |
|being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore|
|three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will,|
|for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot. I had not been seated very long ere a   |
|man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted  |
|door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the   |
|congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain.    |
|Yes, it was the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he  |
|was a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in his youth, |
|but for many years past had dedicated his life to the ministry. At the time I   |
|now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that  |
|sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among    |
|all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly    |
|developing bloom--the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow.|
|No one having previously heard his history, could for the first time behold     |
|Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were certain engrafted |
|clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that adventurous maritime life he|
|had led. When he entered I observed that he carried no umbrella, and certainly  |
|had not come in his carriage, for his tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet,|
|and his great pilot cloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with    |
|the weight of the water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes    |
|were one by one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner;   |
|when, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit. Like most     |
|old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a regular stairs to   |
|such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the   |
|already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the  |
|hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting   |
|a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at  |
|sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair |
|of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed,    |
|and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance, considering what     |
|manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad taste. Halting for an instant|
|at the foot of the ladder, and with both hands grasping the ornamental knobs    |
|of the man-ropes, Father Mapple cast a look upwards, and then with a truly      |
|sailor-like but still reverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps  |
|as if ascending the main-top of his vessel. The perpendicular parts of this     |
|side ladder, as is usually the case with swinging ones, were of cloth-covered   |
|rope, only the rounds were of wood, so that at every step there was a joint. At |
|my first glimpse of the pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient   |
|for a ship, these joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was  |
|not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round,  |
|and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step,     |
|till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little      |
|Quebec. I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.   |
|Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that   |
|I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage.  |
|No, thought I, there must be some sober reason for this thing; furthermore, it  |
|must symbolize something unseen. Can it be, then, that by that act of physical  |
|isolation, he signifies his spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward |
|worldly ties and connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of     |
|the word, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a self-containing  |
|stronghold--a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial well of water within      |
|the walls. But the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,   |
|borrowed from the chaplain's former sea-farings. Between the marble cenotaphs   |
|on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back was adorned with   |
|a large painting representing a gallant ship beating against a terrible storm   |
|off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy breakers. But high above the flying    |
|scud and dark-rolling clouds, there floated a little isle of sunlight, from     |
|which beamed forth an angel's face; and this bright face shed a distinct spot   |
|of radiance upon the ship's tossed deck, something like that silver plate now   |
|inserted into the Victory's plank where Nelson fell. "Ah, noble ship," the angel|
|seemed to say, "beat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy helm; for   |
|lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling off--serenest azure is  |
|at hand." Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that  |
|had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness |
|of a ship's bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a projecting piece of      |
|scroll work, fashioned after a ship's fiddle-headed beak. What could be more    |
|full of meaning?--for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the    |
|rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm |
|of God's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest      |
|brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for   |
|favourable winds. Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage  |
|complete; and the pulpit is its prow. Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice   |
|of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. "Starboard    |
|gangway, there! side away to larboard--larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! |
|midships!" There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a |
|still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every   |
|eye on the preacher. He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows,    |
|folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and    |
|offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the    |
|bottom of the sea. This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual    |
|tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog--in such tones   |
|he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the    |
|concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy-- "The ribs   |
|and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God's sun-lit|
|waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom. "I saw the opening maw of  |
|hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can   |
|tell-- Oh, I was plunging to despair. "In black distress, I called my God, When |
|I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints-- No more the|
|whale did me confine. "With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin |
|borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God. "My  |
|song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory    |
|to my God, His all the mercy and the power. Nearly all joined in singing this   |
|hymn, which swelled high above the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued;  |
|the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding   |
|his hand down upon the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last   |
|verse of the first chapter of Jonah--'And God had prepared a great fish to      |
|swallow up Jonah.'" "Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters--four  |
|yarns--is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures.    |
|Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant    |
|lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's |
|belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over  |
|us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the   |
|slime of the sea is about us! But WHAT is this lesson that the book of Jonah    |
|teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful   |
|men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a    |
|lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly  |
|awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the      |
|deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son|
|of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God--never mind now |
|what that command was, or how conveyed--which he found a hard command. But all  |
|the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do--remember that--and  |
|hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God,   |
|we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the  |
|hardness of obeying God consists. "With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah  |
|still further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship |
|made by men will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only    |
|the Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks     |
|a ship that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded     |
|meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the   |
|modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? |
|Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have    |
|sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea.      |
|Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the|
|Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles   |
|to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not    |
|then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God? Miserable man!  |
|Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye,|
|skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening|
|to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there   |
|been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong,  |
|had been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no        |
|baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,--no friends accompany him to     |
|the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the   |
|Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on board   |
|to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from     |
|hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye. Jonah sees this; but    |
|in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his wretched   |
|smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent.  |
|In their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other--"Jack,      |
|he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry   |
|lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,     |
|one of the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's  |
|stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering    |
|five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a parricide, and containing a   |
|description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all|
|his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands    |
|upon him. Frighted Jonah trembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face,  |
|only looks so much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected;    |
|but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the   |
|sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and   |
|he descends into the cabin. "'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy       |
|desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs--'Who's there?' Oh! how   |
|that harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee   |
|again. But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon     |
|sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though     |
|the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice,    |
|than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We sail with the next coming tide,' at    |
|last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. 'No sooner, sir?'--'Soon    |
|enough for any honest man that goes a passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another     |
|stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. 'I'll sail with    |
|ye,'--he says,--'the passage money how much is that?--I'll pay now.' For it is  |
|particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in  |
|this history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And taken |
|with the context, this is full of meaning. "Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was |
|one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only  |
|in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel    |
|freely, and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all  |
|frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere |
|he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented to. |
|Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves  |
|to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out |
|his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to  |
|find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for|
|his passage. 'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; |
|I need sleep.' 'Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.'    |
|Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing    |
|him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters  |
|something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked   |
|within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth,    |
|and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air |
|is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath    |
|the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling  |
|hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.       |
|"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in   |
|Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of   |
|the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion,      |
|still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in    |
|truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels  |
|among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth |
|his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive  |
|finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp     |
|more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry.   |
|'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it burns;  |
|but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!' "Like one who after a      |
|night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience    |
|yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the      |
|more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still  |
|turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit    |
|be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals     |
|over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and |
|there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth, Jonah's   |
|prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep. "And now the time |
|of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf    |
|the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my    |
|friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the |
|sea rebels; he will not bear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the  |
|ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten    |
|her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is     |
|shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet|
|right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous    |
|sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and  |
|little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now    |
|with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone  |
|down into the sides of the ship--a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and   |
|was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his     |
|dead ear, 'What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy by |
|that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps |
|a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a   |
|panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the   |
|ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners   |
|come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows her   |
|affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah  |
|sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again    |
|towards the tormented deep. "Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul.|
|In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The   |
|sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at    |
|last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven,    |
|they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon   |
|them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with |
|their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country?    |
|What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager  |
|mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only receive  |
|an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put |
|by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God|
|that is upon him. "'I am a Hebrew,' he cries--and then--'I fear the Lord the God|
|of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well |
|mightest thou fear the Lord God THEN! Straightway, he now goes on to make a full|
|confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are |
|pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too   |
|well knew the darkness of his deserts,--when wretched Jonah cries out to them   |
|to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for HIS sake this |
|great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other   |
|means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, |
|with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly   |
|lay hold of Jonah. "And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into |
|the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea  |
|is still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. |
|He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce|
|heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and |
|the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his     |
|prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his|
|prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep    |
|and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. |
|He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite  |
|of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And     |
|here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but |
|grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is  |
|shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, |
|I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him     |
|before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to      |
|repent of it like Jonah." While he was speaking these words, the howling of     |
|the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher,  |
|who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His   |
|deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring    |
|elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow,  |
|and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with|
|a quick fear that was strange to them. There now came a lull in his look, as he |
|silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing   |
|motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and     |
|himself. But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly,|
|with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words:      |
|"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me.   |
|I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches    |
|to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater   |
|sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit|
|on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of |
|you reads ME that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to ME, as a   |
|pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true|
|things, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a |
|wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his |
|mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But |
|God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him|
|in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift    |
|slantings tore him along 'into the midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths |
|sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped about his     |
|head,' and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the|
|reach of any plummet--'out of the belly of hell'--when the whale grounded upon  |
|the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet |
|when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and   |
|blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant |
|sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry |
|land;' when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and     |
|beaten--his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the   |
|ocean--Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach|
|the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it! "This, shipmates, this is that |
|other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him|
|whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon  |
|the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please |
|rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness!  |
|Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonour! Woe to him who would not be|
|true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who, as the great |
|Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!" He dropped |
|and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again,   |
|showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,--"But|
|oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and |
|higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the  |
|main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him--a far, far upward, |
|and inward delight--who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth,    |
|ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms  |
|yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down     |
|beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills,   |
|burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of      |
|Senators and Judges. Delight,--top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges  |
|no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight  |
|is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous      |
|mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and    |
|deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final   |
|breath--O Father!--chiefly known to me by Thy rod--mortal or immortal, here I   |
|die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet |
|this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live  |
|out the lifetime of his God?" He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, |
|covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people  |
|had departed, and he was left alone in the place. Returning to the Spouter-Inn  |
|from the Chapel, I found Queequeg there quite alone; he having left the Chapel  |
|before the benediction some time. He was sitting on a bench before the fire,    |
|with his feet on the stove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to      |
|his face that little negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with    |
|a jack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to himself    |
|in his heathenish way. But being now interrupted, he put up the image; and      |
|pretty soon, going to the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on  |
|his lap began counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth  |
|page--as I fancied--stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and giving  |
|utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He would then begin |
|again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number one each time, as though |
|he could not count more than fifty, and it was only by such a large number of   |
|fifties being found together, that his astonishment at the multitude of pages   |
|was excited. With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and   |
|hideously marred about the face--at least to my taste--his countenance yet had  |
|a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. |
|Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple    |
|honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed   |
|tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils. And besides all this,     |
|there was a certain lofty bearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness   |
|could not altogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and       |
|never had had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved, his  |
|forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked more expansive  |
|than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to decide; but certain it was  |
|his head was phrenologically an excellent one. It may seem ridiculous, but it   |
|reminded me of General Washington's head, as seen in the popular busts of him.  |
|It had the same long regularly graded retreating slope from above the brows,    |
|which were likewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded  |
|on top. Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed. Whilst I was|
|thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the   |
|storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself    |
|with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the |
|pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping     |
|together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate        |
|arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this       |
|indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you  |
|do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm   |
|self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also    |
|that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen |
|in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge |
|the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet,    |
|upon second thoughts, there was something almost sublime in it. Here was a man  |
|some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is--which   |
|was the only way he could get there--thrown among people as strange to him as   |
|though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease;   |
|preserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship; always      |
|equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy; though no doubt   |
|he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But, perhaps, to be true     |
|philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of so living or so striving. So|
|soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I   |
|conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have "broken his digester."|
|As I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that mild stage|
|when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then only glows to be    |
|looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering round the casements, and   |
|peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn  |
|swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me.     |
|No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish   |
|world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference|
|speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland      |
|deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself |
|mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled  |
|most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I'll try a pagan     |
|friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I   |
|drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best   |
|to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but      |
|presently, upon my referring to his last night's hospitalities, he made out to  |
|ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought|
|he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented. We then turned over the book  |
|together, and I endeavored to explain to him the purpose of the printing,       |
|and the meaning of the few pictures that were in it. Thus I soon engaged his    |
|interest; and from that we went to jabbering the best we could about the various|
|outer sights to be seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke;    |
|and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then   |
|we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly    |
|passing between us. If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in   |
|the Pagan's breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and |
|left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as   |
|I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine,    |
|clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning,  |
|in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for    |
|me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would   |
|have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple|
|savage those old rules would not apply. After supper, and another social chat   |
|and smoke, we went to our room together. He made me a present of his embalmed   |
|head; took out his enormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco,      |
|drew out some thirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and   |
|mechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them towards  |
|me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he silenced me by     |
|pouring them into my trowsers' pockets. I let them stay. He then went about     |
|his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed the paper fireboard. By     |
|certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed anxious for me to join him;     |
|but well knowing what was to follow, I deliberated a moment whether, in case    |
|he invited me, I would comply or otherwise. I was a good Christian; born and    |
|bred in the bosom of the infallible Presbyterian Church. How then could I unite |
|with this wild idolator in worshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship?  |
|thought I. Do you suppose now, Ishmael, that the magnanimous God of heaven and  |
|earth--pagans and all included--can possibly be jealous of an insignificant bit |
|of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?--to do the will of God--THAT is |
|worship. And what is the will of God?--to do to my fellow man what I would have |
|my fellow man to do to me--THAT is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow  |
|man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me   |
|in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite  |
|with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped  |
|prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg;      |
|salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed|
|and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences and all the world. But we    |
|did not go to sleep without some little chat. How it is I know not; but there   |
|is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and    |
|wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and    |
|some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus,   |
|then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg--a cosy, loving pair. We     |
|had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg     |
|now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and     |
|then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when,   |
|at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in   |
|us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break     |
|was yet some way down the future. Yes, we became very wakeful; so much so that  |
|our recumbent position began to grow wearisome, and by little and little we     |
|found ourselves sitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against  |
|the head-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two noses   |
|bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt very nice and  |
|snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes|
|too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because     |
|truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there    |
|is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing  |
|exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and|
|have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.   |
|But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of   |
|your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general consciousness   |
|you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping    |
|apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious  |
|discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to     |
|have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the  |
|outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic |
|crystal. We had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all   |
|at once I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether by     |
|day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always keeping    |
|my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of being in bed.    |
|Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; |
|as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be  |
|more congenial to our clayey part. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out    |
|of my own pleasant and self-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer  |
|gloom of the unilluminated twelve-o'clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable|
|revulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Queequeg that perhaps it    |
|were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide awake; and besides he  |
|felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs from his Tomahawk. Be it said,   |
|that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the   |
|night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes|
|to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by   |
|me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy      |
|then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord's policy of insurance.   |
|I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a     |
|pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our  |
|shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there  |
|grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the    |
|new-lit lamp. Whether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage      |
|away to far distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;  |
|and, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He gladly    |
|complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of his words,     |
|yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar with his broken     |
|phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story such as it may prove in   |
|the mere skeleton I give. Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away |
|to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. When   |
|a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout,  |
|followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then, in    |
|Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of      |
|Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a High Chief, a King; |
|his uncle a High Priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the |
|wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal  |
|stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in|
|his untutored youth. A Sag Harbor ship visited his father's bay, and Queequeg   |
|sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement   |
|of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence could  |
|prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a      |
|distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the   |
|island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered|
|with mangrove thickets that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still    |
|afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern,  |
|paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted    |
|out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his  |
|canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck,|
|grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.|
|In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a cutlass over |
|his naked wrists; Queequeg was the son of a King, and Queequeg budged not.      |
|Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom,|
|the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But   |
|this fine young savage--this sea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain's cabin.|
|They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar  |
|Peter content to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no |
|seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of enlightening    |
|his untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a    |
|profound desire to learn among the Christians, the arts whereby to make his     |
|people still happier than they were; and more than that, still better than      |
|they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even    |
|Christians could be both miserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all     |
|his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the   |
|sailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent    |
|their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he,  |
|it's a wicked world in all meridians; I'll die a pagan. And thus an old idolator|
|at heart, he yet lived among these Christians, wore their clothes, and tried    |
|to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer ways about him, though now some time   |
|from home. By hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and     |
|having a coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he   |
|being very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not yet; and    |
|added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians, had unfitted him  |
|for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty pagan Kings before him.   |
|But by and by, he said, he would return,--as soon as he felt himself baptized   |
|again. For the nonce, however, he proposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats |
|in all four oceans. They had made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron     |
|was in lieu of a sceptre now. I asked him what might be his immediate purpose,  |
|touching his future movements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old      |
|vocation. Upon this, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed    |
|him of my intention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port  |
|for an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to accompany    |
|me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the same watch, the    |
|same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my every hap; with both     |
|my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of both worlds. To all this I      |
|joyously assented; for besides the affection I now felt for Queequeg, he was an |
|experienced harpooneer, and as such, could not fail to be of great usefulness   |
|to one, who, like me, was wholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though   |
|well acquainted with the sea, as known to merchant seamen. His story being ended|
|with his pipe's last dying puff, Queequeg embraced me, pressed his forehead     |
|against mine, and blowing out the light, we rolled over from each other, this   |
|way and that, and very soon were sleeping. Next morning, Monday, after disposing|
|of the embalmed head to a barber, for a block, I settled my own and comrade's   |
|bill; using, however, my comrade's money. The grinning landlord, as well as the |
|boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung    |
|up between me and Queequeg--especially as Peter Coffin's cock and bull stories  |
|about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom     |
|I now companied with. We borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things,      |
|including my own poor carpet-bag, and Queequeg's canvas sack and hammock, away  |
|we went down to "the Moss," the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the  |
|wharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Queequeg so much--for   |
|they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their streets,--but at seeing    |
|him and me upon such confidential terms. But we heeded them not, going along    |
|wheeling the barrow by turns, and Queequeg now and then stopping to adjust the  |
|sheath on his harpoon barbs. I asked him why he carried such a troublesome      |
|thing with him ashore, and whether all whaling ships did not find their own     |
|harpoons. To this, in substance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true |
|enough, yet he had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was   |
|of assured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate with  |
|the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers and mowers, who go into|
|the farmers' meadows armed with their own scythes--though in no wise obliged    |
|to furnish them--even so, Queequeg, for his own private reasons, preferred      |
|his own harpoon. Shifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny    |
|story about the first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The   |
|owners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his heavy     |
|chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the thing--though in    |
|truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in which to manage the     |
|barrow--Queequeg puts his chest upon it; lashes it fast; and then shoulders     |
|the barrow and marches up the wharf. "Why," said I, "Queequeg, you might have   |
|known better than that, one would think. Didn't the people laugh?" Upon this,   |
|he told me another story. The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at    |
|their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large |
|stained calabash like a punchbowl; and this punchbowl always forms the great    |
|central ornament on the braided mat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand|
|merchant ship once touched at Rokovoko, and its commander--from all accounts, a |
|very stately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain--this commander  |
|was invited to the wedding feast of Queequeg's sister, a pretty young princess  |
|just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding guests were assembled at the     |
|bride's bamboo cottage, this Captain marches in, and being assigned the post of |
|honour, placed himself over against the punchbowl, and between the High Priest  |
|and his majesty the King, Queequeg's father. Grace being said,--for those people|
|have their grace as well as we--though Queequeg told me that unlike us, who at  |
|such times look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying the   |
|ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts--Grace, I say, being     |
|said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial ceremony of the       |
|island; that is, dipping his consecrated and consecrating fingers into the bowl |
|before the blessed beverage circulates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest,  |
|and noting the ceremony, and thinking himself--being Captain of a ship--as      |
|having plain precedence over a mere island King, especially in the King's own   |
|house--the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the punchbowl;--taking  |
|it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. "Now," said Queequeg, "what you tink      |
|now?--Didn't our people laugh?" At last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we     |
|stood on board the schooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river.  |
|On one side, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees   |
|all glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of casks on     |
|casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale   |
|ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound      |
|of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt      |
|the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most     |
|perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only  |
|begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea,  |
|the intolerableness of all earthly effort. Gaining the more open water, the     |
|bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows,|
|as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!--how I spurned    |
|that turnpike earth!--that common highway all over dented with the marks of     |
|slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea     |
|which will permit no records. At the same foam-fountain, Queequeg seemed to     |
|drink and reel with me. His dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed   |
|and pointed teeth. On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage   |
|to the blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan. Sideways  |
|leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a wire; the two tall  |
|masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes. So full of this reeling     |
|scene were we, as we stood by the plunging bowsprit, that for some time we did  |
|not notice the jeering glances of the passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who   |
|marvelled that two fellow beings should be so companionable; as though a white  |
|man were anything more dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some  |
|boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come     |
|from the heart and centre of all verdure. Queequeg caught one of these young    |
|saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkin's hour of doom    |
|was come. Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught him in his arms, and   |
|by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength, sent him high up bodily into    |
|the air; then slightly tapping his stern in mid-somerset, the fellow landed     |
|with bursting lungs upon his feet, while Queequeg, turning his back upon him,   |
|lighted his tomahawk pipe and passed it to me for a puff. "Capting! Capting!    |
|yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer; "Capting, Capting, here's the |
|devil." "Hallo, YOU sir," cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking   |
|up to Queequeg, "what in thunder do you mean by that? Don't you know you might  |
|have killed that chap?" "What him say?" said Queequeg, as he mildly turned to   |
|me. "He say," said I, "that you came near kill-e that man there," pointing to   |
|the still shivering greenhorn. "Kill-e," cried Queequeg, twisting his tattooed  |
|face into an unearthly expression of disdain, "ah! him bevy small-e fish-e;     |
|Queequeg no kill-e so small-e fish-e; Queequeg kill-e big whale!" "Look you,"   |
|roared the Captain, "I'll kill-e YOU, you cannibal, if you try any more of your |
|tricks aboard here; so mind your eye." But it so happened just then, that it    |
|was high time for the Captain to mind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon   |
|the main-sail had parted the weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now     |
|flying from side to side, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck.|
|The poor fellow whom Queequeg had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all  |
|hands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it, seemed  |
|madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in one ticking of   |
|a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of snapping into splinters.      |
|Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable of being done; those on deck rushed|
|towards the bows, and stood eyeing the boom as if it were the lower jaw of an   |
|exasperated whale. In the midst of this consternation, Queequeg dropped deftly  |
|to his knees, and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope,  |
|secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso,      |
|caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the   |
|spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind,|
|and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the|
|waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three minutes |
|or more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out    |
|before him, and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing    |
|foam. I looked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved.    |
|The greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the water,   |
|Queequeg, now took an instant's glance around him, and seeming to see just      |
|how matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes more, and he rose   |
|again, one arm still striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form. |
|The boat soon picked them up. The poor bumpkin was restored. All hands voted    |
|Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove   |
|to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.   |
|Was there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he at all    |
|deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He only asked for   |
|water--fresh water--something to wipe the brine off; that done, he put on dry   |
|clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the bulwarks, and mildly eyeing  |
|those around him, seemed to be saying to himself--"It's a mutual, joint-stock   |
|world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians." Nothing more |
|happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely  |
|arrived in Nantucket. Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a   |
|real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more |
|lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it--a mere hillock, and elbow of  |
|sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would  |
|use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights    |
|will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don't grow naturally;   |
|that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile|
|to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried     |
|about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools   |
|before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of   |
|grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day's walk a prairie; that they wear    |
|quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up, |
|belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the|
|ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found |
|adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that|
|Nantucket is no Illinois. Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how     |
|this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an |
|eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian |
|in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight  |
|over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting    |
|out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and   |
|there they found an empty ivory casket,--the poor little Indian's skeleton.     |
|What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the |
|sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown    |
|bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed    |
|off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on  |
|the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations |
|round it; peeped in at Behring's Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans     |
|declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the |
|flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, |
|clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are |
|more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults! And thus have |
|these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the |
|sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling |
|out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate    |
|powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada;  |
|let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the |
|sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is |
|his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way|
|through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating   |
|forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the  |
|road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves,|
|without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The       |
|Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language,|
|goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.|
|THERE is his home; THERE lies his business, which a Noah's flood would not      |
|interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea,|
|as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as    |
|chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he|
|comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon |
|would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings   |
|and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of|
|sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very  |
|pillow rush herds of walruses and whales. It was quite late in the evening when |
|the little Moss came snugly to anchor, and Queequeg and I went ashore; so we    |
|could attend to no business that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The |
|landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the|
|Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels  |
|in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin Hosea, as he called|
|him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we could     |
|not possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try Pots. But the directions    |
|he had given us about keeping a yellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we  |
|opened a white church to the larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard    |
|hand till we made a corner three points to the starboard, and that done, then   |
|ask the first man we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his   |
|very much puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Queequeg insisted  |
|that the yellow warehouse--our first point of departure--must be left on the    |
|larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say it was on the       |
|starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in the dark, and now and  |
|then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to inquire the way, we at last came to  |
|something which there was no mistaking. Two enormous wooden pots painted black, |
|and suspended by asses' ears, swung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast,    |
|planted in front of an old doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed     |
|off on the other side, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a     |
|gallows. Perhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I    |
|could not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort of crick  |
|was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes, TWO of them, one  |
|for Queequeg, and one for me. It's ominous, thinks I. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon|
|landing in my first whaling port; tombstones staring at me in the whalemen's    |
|chapel; and here a gallows! and a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these  |
|last throwing out oblique hints touching Tophet? I was called from these        |
|reflections by the sight of a freckled woman with yellow hair and a yellow gown,|
|standing in the porch of the inn, under a dull red lamp swinging there, that    |
|looked much like an injured eye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man    |
|in a purple woollen shirt. "Get along with ye," said she to the man, "or I'll   |
|be combing ye!" "Come on, Queequeg," said I, "all right. There's Mrs. Hussey."  |
|And so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving Mrs. Hussey |
|entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon making known our desires  |
|for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey, postponing further scolding for the        |
|present, ushered us into a little room, and seating us at a table spread with   |
|the relics of a recently concluded repast, turned round to us and said--"Clam   |
|or Cod?" "What's that about Cods, ma'am?" said I, with much politeness. "Clam   |
|or Cod?" she repeated. "A clam for supper? a cold clam; is THAT what you mean,  |
|Mrs. Hussey?" says I, "but that's a rather cold and clammy reception in the     |
|winter time, ain't it, Mrs. Hussey?" But being in a great hurry to resume       |
|scolding the man in the purple Shirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and  |
|seeming to hear nothing but the word "clam," Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an     |
|open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.  |
|"Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make out a supper for us both on  |
|one clam?" However, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the    |
|apparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder came in, |
|the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me. It was|
|made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded  |
|ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up into little flakes; the whole enriched     |
|with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being |
|sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favourite|
|fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we       |
|despatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking  |
|me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little   |
|experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word "cod" with great   |
|emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savoury steam came forth    |
|again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was     |
|placed before us. We resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, |
|thinks I to myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head? What's|
|that stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? "But look, Queequeg, ain't |
|that a live eel in your bowl? Where's your harpoon?" Fishiest of all fishy      |
|places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its name; for the pots there were  |
|always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and     |
|chowder for supper, till you began to look for fish-bones coming through your   |
|clothes. The area before the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey      |
|wore a polished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account  |
|books bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the milk,   |
|too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take   |
|a stroll along the beach among some fishermen's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled   |
|cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a   |
|cod's decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye. Supper concluded,  |
|we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way  |
|to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached|
|forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers.|
|"Why not? said I; "every true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon--but why not?"   |
|"Because it's dangerous," says she. "Ever since young Stiggs coming from that   |
|unfort'nt v'y'ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with only three|
|barrels of ILE, was found dead in my first floor back, with his harpoon in his  |
|side; ever since then I allow no boarders to take sich dangerous weepons in     |
|their rooms at night. So, Mr. Queequeg" (for she had learned his name), "I will |
|just take this here iron, and keep it for you till morning. But the chowder;    |
|clam or cod to-morrow for breakfast, men?" "Both," says I; "and let's have a    |
|couple of smoked herring by way of variety." In bed we concocted our plans for  |
|the morrow. But to my surprise and no small concern, Queequeg now gave me to    |
|understand, that he had been diligently consulting Yojo--the name of his black  |
|little god--and Yojo had told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted|
|upon it everyway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet    |
|in harbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say, Yojo     |
|earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest wholly with me,   |
|inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order to do so, had already   |
|pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself, I, Ishmael, should infallibly  |
|light upon, for all the world as though it had turned out by chance; and in     |
|that vessel I must immediately ship myself, for the present irrespective of     |
|Queequeg. I have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Queequeg placed     |
|great confidence in the excellence of Yojo's judgment and surprising forecast   |
|of things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather good sort   |
|of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in all cases did not  |
|succeed in his benevolent designs. Now, this plan of Queequeg's, or rather      |
|Yojo's, touching the selection of our craft; I did not like that plan at all.   |
|I had not a little relied upon Queequeg's sagacity to point out the whaler      |
|best fitted to carry us and our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances  |
|produced no effect upon Queequeg, I was obliged to acquiesce; and accordingly   |
|prepared to set about this business with a determined rushing sort of energy    |
|and vigor, that should quickly settle that trifling little affair. Next morning |
|early, leaving Queequeg shut up with Yojo in our little bedroom--for it seemed  |
|that it was some sort of Lent or Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and   |
|prayer with Queequeg and Yojo that day; HOW it was I never could find out, for, |
|though I applied myself to it several times, I never could master his liturgies |
|and XXXIX Articles--leaving Queequeg, then, fasting on his tomahawk pipe, and   |
|Yojo warming himself at his sacrificial fire of shavings, I sallied out among   |
|the shipping. After much prolonged sauntering and many random inquiries, I      |
|learnt that there were three ships up for three-years' voyages--The Devil-dam,  |
|the Tit-bit, and the Pequod. DEVIL-DAM, I do not know the origin of; TIT-BIT    |
|is obvious; PEQUOD, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated    |
|tribe of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct as the ancient Medes. I peered and  |
|pryed about the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to the Tit-bit; and finally,   |
|going on board the Pequod, looked around her for a moment, and then decided     |
|that this was the very ship for us. You may have seen many a quaint craft in    |
|your day, for aught I know;--square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks;   |
|butter-box galliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a|
|rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old school,  |
|rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed look about her.     |
|Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and calms of all four oceans, |
|her old hull's complexion was darkened like a French grenadier's, who has alike |
|fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her venerable bows looked bearded. Her masts--cut  |
|somewhere on the coast of Japan, where her original ones were lost overboard in |
|a gale--her masts stood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of    |
|Cologne. Her ancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped  |
|flag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these her old  |
|antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining to the wild     |
|business that for more than half a century she had followed. Old Captain Peleg, |
|many years her chief-mate, before he commanded another vessel of his own, and   |
|now a retired seaman, and one of the principal owners of the Pequod,--this      |
|old Peleg, during the term of his chief-mateship, had built upon her original   |
|grotesqueness, and inlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and  |
|device, unmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake's carved buckler or    |
|bedstead. She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his neck heavy|
|with pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a   |
|craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round,    |
|her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the  |
|long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old |
|hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land    |
|wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel|
|at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one    |
|mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe.    |
|The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest, felt like the Tartar,     |
|when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching its jaw. A noble craft, but     |
|somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that. Now when     |
|I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having authority, in order to     |
|propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at first I saw nobody; but I could|
|not well overlook a strange sort of tent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little    |
|behind the main-mast. It seemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was  |
|of a conical shape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of   |
|limber black bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the     |
|right-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of these slabs |
|laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at the apex united in a |
|tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved to and fro like the top-knot   |
|on some old Pottowottamie Sachem's head. A triangular opening faced towards     |
|the bows of the ship, so that the insider commanded a complete view forward.    |
|And half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by his     |
|aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the ship's work    |
|suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of command. He was seated on|
|an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all over with curious carving; and the  |
|bottom of which was formed of a stout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of  |
|which the wigwam was constructed. There was nothing so very particular, perhaps,|
|about the appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like    |
|most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker   |
|style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest    |
|wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual  |
|sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;--for this causes   |
|the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together. Such eye-wrinkles are very|
|effectual in a scowl. "Is this the Captain of the Pequod?" said I, advancing    |
|to the door of the tent. "Supposing it be the captain of the Pequod, what dost  |
|thou want of him?" he demanded. "I was thinking of shipping." "Thou wast, wast  |
|thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer--ever been in a stove boat?" "No, Sir, I    |
|never have." "Dost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say--eh? "Nothing, |
|Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I've been several voyages in the   |
|merchant service, and I think that--" "Merchant service be damned. Talk not that|
|lingo to me. Dost see that leg?--I'll take that leg away from thy stern, if     |
|ever thou talkest of the marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! |
|I suppose now ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant     |
|ships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?--it looks a   |
|little suspicious, don't it, eh?--Hast not been a pirate, hast thou?--Didst not |
|rob thy last Captain, didst thou?--Dost not think of murdering the officers     |
|when thou gettest to sea?" I protested my innocence of these things. I saw      |
|that under the mask of these half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an   |
|insulated Quakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather |
|distrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the Vineyard.    |
|"But what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of shipping  |
|ye." "Well, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world."       |
|"Want to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Ahab?" "Who    |
|is Captain Ahab, sir?" "Aye, aye, I thought so. Captain Ahab is the Captain     |
|of this ship." "I am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain     |
|himself." "Thou art speaking to Captain Peleg--that's who ye are speaking to,   |
|young man. It belongs to me and Captain Bildad to see the Pequod fitted out for |
|the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We are part owners |
|and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest to know what whaling     |
|is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way of finding it out before ye    |
|bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and |
|thou wilt find that he has only one leg." "What do you mean, sir? Was the other |
|one lost by a whale?" "Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was    |
|devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped  |
|a boat!--ah, ah!" I was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little   |
|touched at the hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as|
|I could, "What you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know there |
|was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed I might have  |
|inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident." "Look ye now, young man,|
|thy lungs are a sort of soft, d'ye see; thou dost not talk shark a bit. SURE,   |
|ye've been to sea before now; sure of that?" "Sir," said I, "I thought I told   |
|you that I had been four voyages in the merchant--" "Hard down out of that! Mind|
|what I said about the marchant service--don't aggravate me--I won't have it. But|
|let us understand each other. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is;   |
|do ye yet feel inclined for it?" "I do, sir." "Very good. Now, art thou the man |
|to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's throat, and then jump after it? Answer,  |
|quick!" "I am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to be|
|got rid of, that is; which I don't take to be the fact." "Good again. Now then, |
|thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find out by experience what whaling   |
|is, but ye also want to go in order to see the world? Was not that what ye said?|
|I thought so. Well then, just step forward there, and take a peep over the      |
|weather-bow, and then back to me and tell me what ye see there." For a moment I |
|stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not knowing exactly how to take |
|it, whether humorously or in earnest. But concentrating all his crow's feet into|
|one scowl, Captain Peleg started me on the errand. Going forward and glancing   |
|over the weather bow, I perceived that the ship swinging to her anchor with the |
|flood-tide, was now obliquely pointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was |
|unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety |
|that I could see. "Well, what's the report?" said Peleg when I came back; "what |
|did ye see?" "Not much," I replied--"nothing but water; considerable horizon    |
|though, and there's a squall coming up, I think." "Well, what does thou think   |
|then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go round Cape Horn to see any more of   |
|it, eh? Can't ye see the world where you stand?" I was a little staggered, but  |
|go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the Pequod was as good a ship as any--I   |
|thought the best--and all this I now repeated to Peleg. Seeing me so determined,|
|he expressed his willingness to ship me. "And thou mayest as well sign the      |
|papers right off," he added--"come along with ye." And so saying, he led the    |
|way below deck into the cabin. Seated on the transom was what seemed to me a    |
|most uncommon and surprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Bildad, who    |
|along with Captain Peleg was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other |
|shares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd of old   |
|annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards; each owning about  |
|the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a nail or two in the ship.   |
|People in Nantucket invest their money in whaling vessels, the same way that    |
|you do yours in approved state stocks bringing in good interest. Now, Bildad,   |
|like Peleg, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a Quaker, the island having |
|been originally settled by that sect; and to this day its inhabitants in general|
|retain in an uncommon measure the peculiarities of the Quaker, only variously   |
|and anomalously modified by things altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some |
|of these same Quakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. |
|They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance. So that there     |
|are instances among them of men, who, named with Scripture names--a singularly  |
|common fashion on the island--and in childhood naturally imbibing the stately   |
|dramatic thee and thou of the Quaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring,  |
|and boundless adventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these   |
|unoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not unworthy a   |
|Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these things unite in|
|a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponderous  |
|heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in|
|the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north,   |
|been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's     |
|sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding   |
|breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental advantages, to  |
|learn a bold and nervous lofty language--that man makes one in a whole nation's |
|census--a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it      |
|at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other     |
|circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the    |
|bottom of his nature. For all men tragically great are made so through a certain|
|morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but      |
|disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another;|
|and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another    |
|phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances. Like Captain Peleg,  |
|Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg--who|
|cared not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those    |
|self-same serious things the veriest of all trifles--Captain Bildad had not     |
|only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket      |
|Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad,     |
|lovely island creatures, round the Horn--all that had not moved this native     |
|born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest.   |
|Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency    |
|about worthy Captain Peleg. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples,       |
|to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the     |
|Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in  |
|his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in  |
|the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things |
|in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much,    |
|and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion    |
|that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.     |
|This world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes of   |
|the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that |
|becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner; Bildad,|
|as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from|
|active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the|
|quiet receiving of his well-earned income. Now, Bildad, I am sorry to say, had  |
|the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a |
|bitter, hard task-master. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems  |
|a curious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew, upon   |
|arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital, sore exhausted   |
|and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker, he was certainly rather |
|hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used to swear, though, at his men,     |
|they said; but somehow he got an inordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard |
|work out of them. When Bildad was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye   |
|intently looking at you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch|
|something--a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at something   |
|or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished before him. His own  |
|person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian character. On his long,      |
|gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no superfluous beard, his chin having a  |
|soft, economical nap to it, like the worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat. Such,   |
|then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I followed Captain   |
|Peleg down into the cabin. The space between the decks was small; and there,    |
|bolt-upright, sat old Bildad, who always sat so, and never leaned, and this to  |
|save his coat tails. His broad-brim was placed beside him; his legs were stiffly|
|crossed; his drab vesture was buttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose,  |
|he seemed absorbed in reading from a ponderous volume. "Bildad," cried Captain  |
|Peleg, "at it again, Bildad, eh? Ye have been studying those Scriptures, now,   |
|for the last thirty years, to my certain knowledge. How far ye got, Bildad?" As |
|if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate, Bildad, without  |
|noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up, and seeing me, glanced     |
|again inquiringly towards Peleg. "He says he's our man, Bildad," said Peleg, "he|
|wants to ship." "Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone, and turning round   |
|to me. "I dost," said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker. "What do ye  |
|think of him, Bildad?" said Peleg. "He'll do," said Bildad, eyeing me, and then |
|went on spelling away at his book in a mumbling tone quite audible. I thought   |
|him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as Peleg, his friend and old |
|shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I said nothing, only looking round me    |
|sharply. Peleg now threw open a chest, and drawing forth the ship's articles,   |
|placed pen and ink before him, and seated himself at a little table. I began to |
|think it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing   |
|to engage for the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they |
|paid no wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of |
|the profits called lays, and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of |
|importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company. I was also|
|aware that being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large;   |
|but considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope,  |
|and all that, I made no doubt that from all I had heard I should be offered at  |
|least the 275th lay--that is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the   |
|voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was  |
|what they call a rather LONG LAY, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had |
|a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on    |
|it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which I would not have  |
|to pay one stiver. It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a |
|princely fortune--and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those  |
|that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the world   |
|is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the  |
|Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the 275th lay would be about the  |
|fair thing, but would not have been surprised had I been offered the 200th,     |
|considering I was of a broad-shouldered make. But one thing, nevertheless,      |
|that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the       |
|profits was this: Ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his   |
|unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they being the principal proprietors of|
|the Pequod, therefore the other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners,   |
|left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did  |
|not know but what the stingy old Bildad might have a mighty deal to say about   |
|shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at     |
|home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his own fireside. Now   |
|while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad,    |
|to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in    |
|these proceedings; Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out  |
|of his book, "LAY not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--"     |
|"Well, Captain Bildad," interrupted Peleg, "what d'ye say, what lay shall we    |
|give this young man?" "Thou knowest best," was the sepulchral reply, "the seven |
|hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much, would it?--'where moth and    |
|rust do corrupt, but LAY--'" LAY, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven  |
|hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for   |
|one, shall not LAY up many LAYS here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It  |
|was an exceedingly LONG LAY that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the  |
|figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration    |
|will show that though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, |
|yet, when you come to make a TEENTH of it, you will then see, I say, that the   |
|seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than   |
|seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.   |
|"Why, blast your eyes, Bildad," cried Peleg, "thou dost not want to swindle this|
|young man! he must have more than that." "Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,"   |
|again said Bildad, without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--"for    |
|where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." "I am going to put him  |
|down for the three hundredth," said Peleg, "do ye hear that, Bildad! The three  |
|hundredth lay, I say." Bildad laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards  |
|him said, "Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the|
|duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and orphans, many of   |
|them--and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may |
|be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and  |
|seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg." "Thou Bildad!" roared Peleg, starting up   |
|and clattering about the cabin. "Blast ye, Captain Bildad, if I had followed thy|
|advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that   |
|would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape   |
|Horn." "Captain Peleg," said Bildad steadily, "thy conscience may be drawing    |
|ten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can't tell; but as thou art still an     |
|impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky|
|one; and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain    |
|Peleg." "Fiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing,     |
|ye insult me. It's an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that he's    |
|bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Bildad, say that again to me, and start my    |
|soul-bolts, but I'll--I'll--yes, I'll swallow a live goat with all his hair and |
|horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting, drab-coloured son of a wooden gun--a    |
|straight wake with ye!" As he thundered out this he made a rush at Bildad, but  |
|with a marvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Bildad for that time eluded him.   |
|Alarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and responsible     |
|owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all idea of sailing in   |
|a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily commanded, I stepped aside from  |
|the door to give egress to Bildad, who, I made no doubt, was all eagerness to   |
|vanish from before the awakened wrath of Peleg. But to my astonishment, he sat  |
|down again on the transom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest    |
|intention of withdrawing. He seemed quite used to impenitent Peleg and his      |
|ways. As for Peleg, after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more  |
|left in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a little as  |
|if still nervously agitated. "Whew!" he whistled at last--"the squall's gone    |
|off to leeward, I think. Bildad, thou used to be good at sharpening a lance,    |
|mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs the grindstone. That's he;     |
|thank ye, Bildad. Now then, my young man, Ishmael's thy name, didn't ye say?    |
|Well then, down ye go here, Ishmael, for the three hundredth lay." "Captain     |
|Peleg," said I, "I have a friend with me who wants to ship too--shall I bring   |
|him down to-morrow?" "To be sure," said Peleg. "Fetch him along, and we'll look |
|at him." "What lay does he want?" groaned Bildad, glancing up from the book     |
|in which he had again been burying himself. "Oh! never thee mind about that,    |
|Bildad," said Peleg. "Has he ever whaled it any?" turning to me. "Killed more   |
|whales than I can count, Captain Peleg." "Well, bring him along then." And,     |
|after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I had done      |
|a good morning's work, and that the Pequod was the identical ship that Yojo     |
|had provided to carry Queequeg and me round the Cape. But I had not proceeded   |
|far, when I began to bethink me that the Captain with whom I was to sail yet    |
|remained unseen by me; though, indeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be      |
|completely fitted out, and receive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes |
|himself visible by arriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so |
|prolonged, and the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the    |
|captain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he does not   |
|trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to the owners till  |
|all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to have a look at him before|
|irrevocably committing yourself into his hands. Turning back I accosted Captain |
|Peleg, inquiring where Captain Ahab was to be found. "And what dost thou want   |
|of Captain Ahab? It's all right enough; thou art shipped." "Yes, but I should   |
|like to see him." "But I don't think thou wilt be able to at present. I don't   |
|know exactly what's the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the house; a |
|sort of sick, and yet he don't look so. In fact, he ain't sick; but no, he isn't|
|well either. Any how, young man, he won't always see me, so I don't suppose he  |
|will thee. He's a queer man, Captain Ahab--so some think--but a good one. Oh,   |
|thou'lt like him well enough; no fear, no fear. He's a grand, ungodly, god-like |
|man, Captain Ahab; doesn't speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may    |
|well listen. Mark ye, be forewarned; Ahab's above the common; Ahab's been in    |
|colleges, as well as 'mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders than the  |
|waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than whales. His lance! |
|aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our isle! Oh! he ain't Captain  |
|Bildad; no, and he ain't Captain Peleg; HE'S AHAB, boy; and Ahab of old, thou   |
|knowest, was a crowned king!" "And a very vile one. When that wicked king was   |
|slain, the dogs, did they not lick his blood?" "Come hither to me--hither,      |
|hither," said Peleg, with a significance in his eye that almost startled me.    |
|"Look ye, lad; never say that on board the Pequod. Never say it anywhere.       |
|Captain Ahab did not name himself. 'Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, |
|widowed mother, who died when he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old    |
|squaw Tistig, at Gayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And,|
|perhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn thee. It's |
|a lie. I know Captain Ahab well; I've sailed with him as mate years ago; I know |
|what he is--a good man--not a pious, good man, like Bildad, but a swearing good |
|man--something like me--only there's a good deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know  |
|that he was never very jolly; and I know that on the passage home, he was a     |
|little out of his mind for a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his  |
|bleeding stump that brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that |
|ever since he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he's been a kind |
|of moody--desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all pass off.    |
|And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young man, it's better to   |
|sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad one. So good-bye to thee--and|
|wrong not Captain Ahab, because he happens to have a wicked name. Besides, my   |
|boy, he has a wife--not three voyages wedded--a sweet, resigned girl. Think of  |
|that; by that sweet girl that old man has a child: hold ye then there can be    |
|any utter, hopeless harm in Ahab? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be,  |
|Ahab has his humanities!" As I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what  |
|had been incidentally revealed to me of Captain Ahab, filled me with a certain  |
|wild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time, I felt  |
|a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don't know what, unless it was the   |
|cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange awe of him; but that sort  |
|of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was not exactly awe; I do not know what |
|it was. But I felt it; and it did not disincline me towards him; though I felt  |
|impatience at what seemed like mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known   |
|to me then. However, my thoughts were at length carried in other directions,    |
|so that for the present dark Ahab slipped my mind. As Queequeg's Ramadan, or    |
|Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all day, I did not choose to disturb   |
|him till towards night-fall; for I cherish the greatest respect towards         |
|everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it|
|in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; |
|or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of    |
|footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of   |
|a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions    |
|yet owned and rented in his name. I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should |
|be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to    |
|other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on     |
|these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd |
|notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;--but what of that? Queequeg thought he      |
|knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him   |
|rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven   |
|have mercy on us all--Presbyterians and Pagans alike--for we are all somehow    |
|dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending. Towards evening, when|
|I felt assured that all his performances and rituals must be over, I went up to |
|his room and knocked at the door; but no answer. I tried to open it, but it was |
|fastened inside. "Queequeg," said I softly through the key-hole:--all silent.   |
|"I say, Queequeg! why don't you speak? It's I--Ishmael." But all remained still |
|as before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant time; I     |
|thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through the key-hole; but |
|the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the key-hole prospect was but  |
|a crooked and sinister one. I could only see part of the foot-board of the bed  |
|and a line of the wall, but nothing more. I was surprised to behold resting     |
|against the wall the wooden shaft of Queequeg's harpoon, which the landlady the |
|evening previous had taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber. That's |
|strange, thought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he    |
|seldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside here, and   |
|no possible mistake. "Queequeg!--Queequeg!"--all still. Something must have     |
|happened. Apoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted. |
|Running down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person I       |
|met--the chamber-maid. "La! la!" she cried, "I thought something must be the    |
|matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door was locked; and not|
|a mouse to be heard; and it's been just so silent ever since. But I thought,    |
|may be, you had both gone off and locked your baggage in for safe keeping. La!  |
|la, ma'am!--Mistress! murder! Mrs. Hussey! apoplexy!"--and with these cries,    |
|she ran towards the kitchen, I following. Mrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a     |
|mustard-pot in one hand and a vinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken    |
|away from the occupation of attending to the castors, and scolding her little   |
|black boy meantime. "Wood-house!" cried I, "which way to it? Run for God's sake,|
|and fetch something to pry open the door--the axe!--the axe! he's had a stroke; |
|depend upon it!"--and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs again    |
|empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and vinegar-cruet,    |
|and the entire castor of her countenance. "What's the matter with you, young    |
|man?" "Get the axe! For God's sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry it|
|open!" "Look here," said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet,  |
|so as to have one hand free; "look here; are you talking about prying open      |
|any of my doors?"--and with that she seized my arm. "What's the matter with     |
|you? What's the matter with you, shipmate?" In as calm, but rapid a manner      |
|as possible, I gave her to understand the whole case. Unconsciously clapping    |
|the vinegar-cruet to one side of her nose, she ruminated for an instant; then   |
|exclaimed--"No! I haven't seen it since I put it there." Running to a little    |
|closet under the landing of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me  |
|that Queequeg's harpoon was missing. "He's killed himself," she cried. "It's    |
|unfort'nate Stiggs done over again there goes another counterpane--God pity     |
|his poor mother!--it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad a sister?   |
|Where's that girl?--there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter, and tell him to    |
|paint me a sign, with--"no suicides permitted here, and no smoking in the       |
|parlor;"--might as well kill both birds at once. Kill? The Lord be merciful to  |
|his ghost! What's that noise there? You, young man, avast there!" And running   |
|up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force open the door. "I     |
|don't allow it; I won't have my premises spoiled. Go for the locksmith, there's |
|one about a mile from here. But avast!" putting her hand in her side-pocket,    |
|"here's a key that'll fit, I guess; let's see." And with that, she turned it in |
|the lock; but, alas! Queequeg's supplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.  |
|"Have to burst it open," said I, and was running down the entry a little, for   |
|a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing I should not break   |
|down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a sudden bodily rush dashed    |
|myself full against the mark. With a prodigious noise the door flew open, and   |
|the knob slamming against the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, |
|good heavens! there sat Queequeg, altogether cool and self-collected; right     |
|in the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on top of    |
|his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat like a carved    |
|image with scarce a sign of active life. "Queequeg," said I, going up to him,   |
|"Queequeg, what's the matter with you?" "He hain't been a sittin' so all day,   |
|has he?" said the landlady. But all we said, not a word could we drag out of    |
|him; I almost felt like pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it  |
|was almost intolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained;     |
|especially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of eight   |
|or ten hours, going too without his regular meals. "Mrs. Hussey," said I, "he's |
|ALIVE at all events; so leave us, if you please, and I will see to this strange |
|affair myself." Closing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon|
|Queequeg to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could do--for   |
|all my polite arts and blandishments--he would not move a peg, nor say a single |
|word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in the slightest way. I       |
|wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do they fast  |
|on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so; yes, it's part of   |
|his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he'll get up sooner or later,   |
|no doubt. It can't last for ever, thank God, and his Ramadan only comes once    |
|a year; and I don't believe it's very punctual then. I went down to supper.     |
|After sitting a long time listening to the long stories of some sailors who     |
|had just come from a plum-pudding voyage, as they called it (that is, a short   |
|whaling-voyage in a schooner or brig, confined to the north of the line, in     |
|the Atlantic Ocean only); after listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly  |
|eleven o'clock, I went up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time  |
|Queequeg must certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there|
|he was just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began to grow   |
|vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to be sitting there |
|all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room, holding a piece of wood  |
|on his head. "For heaven's sake, Queequeg, get up and shake yourself; get up    |
|and have some supper. You'll starve; you'll kill yourself, Queequeg." But not a |
|word did he reply. Despairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and  |
|to sleep; and no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous  |
|to turning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as it    |
|promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but his ordinary round     |
|jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not get into the faintest     |
|doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere thought of Queequeg--not four    |
|feet off--sitting there in that uneasy position, stark alone in the cold and    |
|dark; this made me really wretched. Think of it; sleeping all night in the      |
|same room with a wide awake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable     |
|Ramadan! But somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break    |
|of day; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Queequeg, as if he had   |
|been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of sun entered |
|the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but with a cheerful look; |
|limped towards me where I lay; pressed his forehead again against mine; and     |
|said his Ramadan was over. Now, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any  |
|person's religion, be it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or   |
|insult any other person, because that other person don't believe it also. But   |
|when a man's religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment to  |
|him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to lodge in;   |
|then I think it high time to take that individual aside and argue the point     |
|with him. And just so I now did with Queequeg. "Queequeg," said I, "get into    |
|bed now, and lie and listen to me." I then went on, beginning with the rise and |
|progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions   |
|of the present time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all      |
|these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms    |
|were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in      |
|short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense. I told him, too, that   |
|he being in other things such an extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it    |
|pained me, very badly pained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this|
|ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in;   |
|hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be  |
|half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such   |
|melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather|
|digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and   |
|since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.  |
|I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia;      |
|expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in. He said no; only |
|upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by his father     |
|the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been  |
|killed by about two o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very|
|evening. "No more, Queequeg," said I, shuddering; "that will do;" for I knew    |
|the inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had    |
|visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a great   |
|battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of|
|the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great wooden trenchers,   |
|and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some  |
|parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor's compliments to all   |
|his friends, just as though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys.      |
|After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much impression   |
|upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing   |
|on that important subject, unless considered from his own point of view; and,   |
|in the second place, he did not more than one third understand me, couch my     |
|ideas simply as I would; and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good       |
|deal more about the true religion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of    |
|condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that |
|such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan     |
|piety. At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty  |
|breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make much   |
|profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering |
|along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones. As we were walking down the end|
|of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in  |
|his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected   |
|my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals   |
|on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers. "What do you |
|mean by that, Captain Peleg?" said I, now jumping on the bulwarks, and leaving  |
|my comrade standing on the wharf. "I mean," he replied, "he must show his       |
|papers." "Yes," said Captain Bildad in his hollow voice, sticking his head from |
|behind Peleg's, out of the wigwam. "He must show that he's converted. Son of    |
|darkness," he added, turning to Queequeg, "art thou at present in communion with|
|any Christian church?" "Why," said I, "he's a member of the first Congregational|
|Church." Here be it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket       |
|ships at last come to be converted into the churches. "First Congregational     |
|Church," cried Bildad, "what! that worships in Deacon Deuteronomy Coleman's     |
|meeting-house?" and so saying, taking out his spectacles, he rubbed them with   |
|his great yellow bandana handkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came |
|out of the wigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look |
|at Queequeg. "How long hath he been a member?" he then said, turning to me;     |
|"not very long, I rather guess, young man." "No," said Peleg, "and he hasn't    |
|been baptized right either, or it would have washed some of that devil's blue   |
|off his face." "Do tell, now," cried Bildad, "is this Philistine a regular      |
|member of Deacon Deuteronomy's meeting? I never saw him going there, and I      |
|pass it every Lord's day." "I don't know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or   |
|his meeting," said I; "all I know is, that Queequeg here is a born member of    |
|the First Congregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Queequeg is." "Young   |
|man," said Bildad sternly, "thou art skylarking with me--explain thyself, thou  |
|young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me." Finding myself thus hard |
|pushed, I replied. "I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you  |
|and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every     |
|mother's son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congregation|
|of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish |
|some queer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in THAT we all join     |
|hands." "Splice, thou mean'st SPLICE hands," cried Peleg, drawing nearer. "Young|
|man, you'd better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast hand; I never   |
|heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy--why Father Mapple himself couldn't   |
|beat it, and he's reckoned something. Come aboard, come aboard; never mind about|
|the papers. I say, tell Quohog there--what's that you call him? tell Quohog     |
|to step along. By the great anchor, what a harpoon he's got there! looks like   |
|good stuff that; and he handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your |
|name is, did you ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a  |
|fish?" Without saying a word, Queequeg, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon    |
|the bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats hanging to    |
|the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his harpoon, cried out in |
|some such way as this:-- "Cap'ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You|
|see him? well, spose him one whale eye, well, den!" and taking sharp aim at it, |
|he darted the iron right over old Bildad's broad brim, clean across the ship's  |
|decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight. "Now," said Queequeg,   |
|quietly hauling in the line, "spos-ee him whale-e eye; why, dad whale dead."    |
|"Quick, Bildad," said Peleg, his partner, who, aghast at the close vicinity of  |
|the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin gangway. "Quick, I say, you |
|Bildad, and get the ship's papers. We must have Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog,  |
|in one of our boats. Look ye, Quohog, we'll give ye the ninetieth lay, and      |
|that's more than ever was given a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket." So down we  |
|went into the cabin, and to my great joy Queequeg was soon enrolled among the   |
|same ship's company to which I myself belonged. When all preliminaries were     |
|over and Peleg had got everything ready for signing, he turned to me and said,  |
|"I guess, Quohog there don't know how to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast   |
|ye! dost thou sign thy name or make thy mark? But at this question, Queequeg,   |
|who had twice or thrice before taken part in similar ceremonies, looked no ways |
|abashed; but taking the offered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place,|
|an exact counterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm;   |
|so that through Captain Peleg's obstinate mistake touching his appellative,     |
|it stood something like this:-- Quohog. his X mark. Meanwhile Captain Bildad    |
|sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Queequeg, and at last rising solemnly and  |
|fumbling in the huge pockets of his broad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle  |
|of tracts, and selecting one entitled "The Latter Day Coming; or No Time to     |
|Lose," placed it in Queequeg's hands, and then grasping them and the book with  |
|both his, looked earnestly into his eyes, and said, "Son of darkness, I must do |
|my duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for the souls |
|of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways, which I sadly fear,  |
|I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial bondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and  |
|the hideous dragon; turn from the wrath to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh!     |
|goodness gracious! steer clear of the fiery pit!" Something of the salt sea     |
|yet lingered in old Bildad's language, heterogeneously mixed with Scriptural    |
|and domestic phrases. "Avast there, avast there, Bildad, avast now spoiling     |
|our harpooneer," Peleg. "Pious harpooneers never make good voyagers--it takes   |
|the shark out of 'em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty sharkish.  |
|There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out of all Nantucket   |
|and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never came to good. He got so      |
|frightened about his plaguy soul, that he shrinked and sheered away from whales,|
|for fear of after-claps, in case he got stove and went to Davy Jones." "Peleg!  |
|Peleg!" said Bildad, lifting his eyes and hands, "thou thyself, as I myself,    |
|hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Peleg, what it is to have the     |
|fear of death; how, then, can'st thou prate in this ungodly guise. Thou beliest |
|thine own heart, Peleg. Tell me, when this same Pequod here had her three masts |
|overboard in that typhoon on Japan, that same voyage when thou went mate with   |
|Captain Ahab, did'st thou not think of Death and the Judgment then?" "Hear      |
|him, hear him now," cried Peleg, marching across the cabin, and thrusting his   |
|hands far down into his pockets,--"hear him, all of ye. Think of that! When     |
|every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death and the Judgment then? What? |
|With all three masts making such an everlasting thundering against the side;    |
|and every sea breaking over us, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment   |
|then? No! no time to think about Death then. Life was what Captain Ahab and I   |
|was thinking of; and how to save all hands--how to rig jury-masts--how to get   |
|into the nearest port; that was what I was thinking of." Bildad said no more,   |
|but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where we followed him. There he     |
|stood, very quietly overlooking some sailmakers who were mending a top-sail in  |
|the waist. Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred |
|twine, which otherwise might have been wasted. "Shipmates, have ye shipped in   |
|that ship?" Queequeg and I had just left the Pequod, and were sauntering away   |
|from the water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the    |
|above words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us, levelled his  |
|massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled    |
|in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing   |
|his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face,     |
|and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing      |
|waters have been dried up. "Have ye shipped in her?" he repeated. "You mean     |
|the ship Pequod, I suppose," said I, trying to gain a little more time for an   |
|uninterrupted look at him. "Aye, the Pequod--that ship there," he said, drawing |
|back his whole arm, and then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with     |
|the fixed bayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object. "Yes," said  |
|I, "we have just signed the articles." "Anything down there about your souls?"  |
|"About what?" "Oh, perhaps you hav'n't got any," he said quickly. "No matter    |
|though, I know many chaps that hav'n't got any,--good luck to 'em; and they     |
|are all the better off for it. A soul's a sort of a fifth wheel to a wagon."    |
|"What are you jabbering about, shipmate?" said I. "HE'S got enough, though,     |
|to make up for all deficiencies of that sort in other chaps," abruptly said     |
|the stranger, placing a nervous emphasis upon the word HE. "Queequeg," said     |
|I, "let's go; this fellow has broken loose from somewhere; he's talking about   |
|something and somebody we don't know." "Stop!" cried the stranger. "Ye said     |
|true--ye hav'n't seen Old Thunder yet, have ye?" "Who's Old Thunder?" said I,   |
|again riveted with the insane earnestness of his manner. "Captain Ahab." "What! |
|the captain of our ship, the Pequod?" "Aye, among some of us old sailor chaps,  |
|he goes by that name. Ye hav'n't seen him yet, have ye?" "No, we hav'n't. He's  |
|sick they say, but is getting better, and will be all right again before long." |
|"All right again before long!" laughed the stranger, with a solemnly derisive   |
|sort of laugh. "Look ye; when Captain Ahab is all right, then this left arm of  |
|mine will be all right; not before." "What do you know about him?" "What did    |
|they TELL you about him? Say that!" "They didn't tell much of anything about    |
|him; only I've heard that he's a good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his   |
|crew." "That's true, that's true--yes, both true enough. But you must jump when |
|he gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go--that's the word with Captain   |
|Ahab. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off Cape Horn, long     |
|ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights; nothing about that deadly |
|skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar in Santa?--heard nothing about that,|
|eh? Nothing about the silver calabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing|
|his leg last voyage, according to the prophecy. Didn't ye hear a word about     |
|them matters and something more, eh? No, I don't think ye did; how could ye?    |
|Who knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows'ever, mayhap, ye've heard    |
|tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of that, I dare      |
|say. Oh yes, THAT every one knows a'most--I mean they know he's only one leg;   |
|and that a parmacetti took the other off." "My friend," said I, "what all this  |
|gibberish of yours is about, I don't know, and I don't much care; for it seems  |
|to me that you must be a little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of |
|Captain Ahab, of that ship there, the Pequod, then let me tell you, that I know |
|all about the loss of his leg." "ALL about it, eh--sure you do?--all?" "Pretty  |
|sure." With finger pointed and eye levelled at the Pequod, the beggar-like      |
|stranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a little,   |
|turned and said:--"Ye've shipped, have ye? Names down on the papers? Well, well,|
|what's signed, is signed; and what's to be, will be; and then again, perhaps    |
|it won't be, after all. Anyhow, it's all fixed and arranged a'ready; and some   |
|sailors or other must go with him, I suppose; as well these as any other men,   |
|God pity 'em! Morning to ye, shipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless    |
|ye; I'm sorry I stopped ye." "Look here, friend," said I, "if you have anything |
|important to tell us, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us,  |
|you are mistaken in your game; that's all I have to say." "And it's said very   |
|well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way; you are just the man for      |
|him--the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates, morning! Oh! when ye get there, |
|tell 'em I've concluded not to make one of 'em." "Ah, my dear fellow, you can't |
|fool us that way--you can't fool us. It is the easiest thing in the world for   |
|a man to look as if he had a great secret in him." "Morning to ye, shipmates,   |
|morning." "Morning it is," said I. "Come along, Queequeg, let's leave this      |
|crazy man. But stop, tell me your name, will you?" "Elijah." Elijah! thought    |
|I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each other's fashion, upon this   |
|ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was nothing but a humbug, trying to be    |
|a bugbear. But we had not gone perhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing     |
|to turn a corner, and looking back as I did so, who should be seen but Elijah   |
|following us, though at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so,     |
|that I said nothing to Queequeg of his being behind, but passed on with my      |
|comrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner that    |
|we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us, but with what  |
|intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This circumstance, coupled with  |
|his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing, shrouded sort of talk, now begat   |
|in me all kinds of vague wonderments and half-apprehensions, and all connected  |
|with the Pequod; and Captain Ahab; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn   |
|fit; and the silver calabash; and what Captain Peleg had said of him, when I    |
|left the ship the day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the |
|voyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy things. I    |
|was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Elijah was really dogging us |
|or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Queequeg, and on that side of |
|it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, without seeming to notice us. This |
|relieved me; and once more, and finally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in |
|my heart, a humbug. A day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the|
|Pequod. Not only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on  |
|board, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything betokened|
|that the ship's preparations were hurrying to a close. Captain Peleg seldom     |
|or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam keeping a sharp look-out upon the   |
|hands: Bildad did all the purchasing and providing at the stores; and the men   |
|employed in the hold and on the rigging were working till long after night-fall.|
|On the day following Queequeg's signing the articles, word was given at all the |
|inns where the ship's company were stopping, that their chests must be on board |
|before night, for there was no telling how soon the vessel might be sailing.    |
|So Queequeg and I got down our traps, resolving, however, to sleep ashore till  |
|the last. But it seems they always give very long notice in these cases, and    |
|the ship did not sail for several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to |
|be done, and there is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the   |
|Pequod was fully equipped. Every one knows what a multitude of things--beds,    |
|sauce-pans, knives and forks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what|
|not, are indispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling,   |
|which necessitates a three-years' housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far from    |
|all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And though this also  |
|holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with |
|whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous      |
|articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of   |
|replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, |
|that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all     |
|kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which |
|the success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare spars, and|
|spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but a spare Captain    |
|and duplicate ship. At the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest    |
|storage of the Pequod had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread,    |
|water, fuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time    |
|there was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and ends    |
|of things, both large and small. Chief among those who did this fetching and    |
|carrying was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and  |
|indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if |
|SHE could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once    |
|fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a jar of pickles|
|for the steward's pantry; another time with a bunch of quills for the chief     |
|mate's desk, where he kept his log; a third time with a roll of flannel for the |
|small of some one's rheumatic back. Never did any woman better deserve her name,|
|which was Charity--Aunt Charity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of  |
|charity did this charitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready |
|to turn her hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort,  |
|and consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother Bildad was  |
|concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of well-saved dollars. |
|But it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on board,   |
|as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and a still longer  |
|whaling lance in the other. Nor was Bildad himself nor Captain Peleg at all     |
|backward. As for Bildad, he carried about with him a long list of the articles  |
|needed, and at every fresh arrival, down went his mark opposite that article    |
|upon the paper. Every once in a while Peleg came hobbling out of his whalebone  |
|den, roaring at the men down the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the    |
|mast-head, and then concluded by roaring back into his wigwam. During these     |
|days of preparation, Queequeg and I often visited the craft, and as often I     |
|asked about Captain Ahab, and how he was, and when he was going to come on board|
|his ship. To these questions they would answer, that he was getting better and  |
|better, and was expected aboard every day; meantime, the two captains, Peleg and|
|Bildad, could attend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage.  |
|If I had been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly in my|
|heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so long a voyage,   |
|without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the absolute dictator of   |
|it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open sea. But when a man suspects   |
|any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he be already involved in the matter,   |
|he insensibly strives to cover up his suspicions even from himself. And much    |
|this way it was with me. I said nothing, and tried to think nothing. At last it |
|was given out that some time next day the ship would certainly sail. So next    |
|morning, Queequeg and I took a very early start. It was nearly six o'clock, but |
|only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we drew nigh the wharf. "There are some    |
|sailors running ahead there, if I see right," said I to Queequeg, "it can't     |
|be shadows; she's off by sunrise, I guess; come on!" "Avast!" cried a voice,    |
|whose owner at the same time coming close behind us, laid a hand upon both our  |
|shoulders, and then insinuating himself between us, stood stooping forward a    |
|little, in the uncertain twilight, strangely peering from Queequeg to me. It    |
|was Elijah. "Going aboard?" "Hands off, will you," said I. "Lookee here," said  |
|Queequeg, shaking himself, "go 'way!" "Ain't going aboard, then?" "Yes, we are,"|
|said I, "but what business is that of yours? Do you know, Mr. Elijah, that      |
|I consider you a little impertinent?" "No, no, no; I wasn't aware of that,"     |
|said Elijah, slowly and wonderingly looking from me to Queequeg, with the most  |
|unaccountable glances. "Elijah," said I, "you will oblige my friend and me by   |
|withdrawing. We are going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not|
|to be detained." "Ye be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?" "He's cracked,    |
|Queequeg," said I, "come on." "Holloa!" cried stationary Elijah, hailing us     |
|when we had removed a few paces. "Never mind him," said I, "Queequeg, come on." |
|But he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my shoulder,     |
|said--"Did ye see anything looking like men going towards that ship a while     |
|ago?" Struck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, "Yes, I |
|thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure." "Very dim,  |
|very dim," said Elijah. "Morning to ye." Once more we quitted him; but once more|
|he came softly after us; and touching my shoulder again, said, "See if you can  |
|find 'em now, will ye? "Find who?" "Morning to ye! morning to ye!" he rejoined, |
|again moving off. "Oh! I was going to warn ye against--but never mind, never    |
|mind--it's all one, all in the family too;--sharp frost this morning, ain't it? |
|Good-bye to ye. Shan't see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it's before the  |
|Grand Jury." And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving me, for  |
|the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence. At last, stepping  |
|on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound quiet, not a soul moving.  |
|The cabin entrance was locked within; the hatches were all on, and lumbered     |
|with coils of rigging. Going forward to the forecastle, we found the slide of   |
|the scuttle open. Seeing a light, we went down, and found only an old rigger    |
|there, wrapped in a tattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two |
|chests, his face downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest     |
|slumber slept upon him. "Those sailors we saw, Queequeg, where can they have    |
|gone to?" said I, looking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when    |
|on the wharf, Queequeg had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I    |
|would have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that matter, were  |
|it not for Elijah's otherwise inexplicable question. But I beat the thing down; |
|and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to Queequeg that perhaps we had |
|best sit up with the body; telling him to establish himself accordingly. He put |
|his hand upon the sleeper's rear, as though feeling if it was soft enough; and  |
|then, without more ado, sat quietly down there. "Gracious! Queequeg, don't sit  |
|there," said I. "Oh! perry dood seat," said Queequeg, "my country way; won't    |
|hurt him face." "Face!" said I, "call that his face? very benevolent countenance|
|then; but how hard he breathes, he's heaving himself; get off, Queequeg, you are|
|heavy, it's grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Queequeg! Look, he'll twitch|
|you off soon. I wonder he don't wake." Queequeg removed himself to just beyond  |
|the head of the sleeper, and lighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet.      |
|We kept the pipe passing over the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile,    |
|upon questioning him in his broken fashion, Queequeg gave me to understand      |
|that, in his land, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the  |
|king, chiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening some  |
|of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house comfortably in that    |
|respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy fellows, and lay them round   |
|in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was very convenient on an excursion; much |
|better than those garden-chairs which are convertible into walking-sticks; upon |
|occasion, a chief calling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee      |
|of himself under a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place. While     |
|narrating these things, every time Queequeg received the tomahawk from me, he   |
|flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper's head. "What's that for,    |
|Queequeg?" "Perry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy! He was going on with some wild  |
|reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe, which, it seemed, had in its two uses    |
|both brained his foes and soothed his soul, when we were directly attracted to  |
|the sleeping rigger. The strong vapour now completely filling the contracted    |
|hole, it began to tell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then   |
|seemed troubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and  |
|rubbed his eyes. "Holloa!" he breathed at last, "who be ye smokers?" "Shipped   |
|men," answered I, "when does she sail?" "Aye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye?  |
|She sails to-day. The Captain came aboard last night." "What Captain?--Ahab?"   |
|"Who but him indeed?" I was going to ask him some further questions concerning  |
|Ahab, when we heard a noise on deck. "Holloa! Starbuck's astir," said the       |
|rigger. "He's a lively chief mate, that; good man, and a pious; but all alive   |
|now, I must turn to." And so saying he went on deck, and we followed. It was    |
|now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and threes; the riggers  |
|bestirred themselves; the mates were actively engaged; and several of the shore |
|people were busy in bringing various last things on board. Meanwhile Captain    |
|Ahab remained invisibly enshrined within his cabin. At length, towards noon,    |
|upon the final dismissal of the ship's riggers, and after the Pequod had been   |
|hauled out from the wharf, and after the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off   |
|in a whale-boat, with her last gift--a night-cap for Stubb, the second mate,    |
|her brother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward--after all this, the two  |
|Captains, Peleg and Bildad, issued from the cabin, and turning to the chief     |
|mate, Peleg said: "Now, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain |
|Ahab is all ready--just spoke to him--nothing more to be got from shore, eh?    |
|Well, call all hands, then. Muster 'em aft here--blast 'em!" "No need of profane|
|words, however great the hurry, Peleg," said Bildad, "but away with thee, friend|
|Starbuck, and do our bidding." How now! Here upon the very point of starting for|
|the voyage, Captain Peleg and Captain Bildad were going it with a high hand on  |
|the quarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as well   |
|as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Ahab, no sign of him was     |
|yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But then, the idea was,    |
|that his presence was by no means necessary in getting the ship under weigh,    |
|and steering her well out to sea. Indeed, as that was not at all his proper     |
|business, but the pilot's; and as he was not yet completely recovered--so they  |
|said--therefore, Captain Ahab stayed below. And all this seemed natural enough; |
|especially as in the merchant service many captains never show themselves on    |
|deck for a considerable time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the   |
|cabin table, having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends, before    |
|they quit the ship for good with the pilot. But there was not much chance to    |
|think over the matter, for Captain Peleg was now all alive. He seemed to do most|
|of the talking and commanding, and not Bildad. "Aft here, ye sons of bachelors,"|
|he cried, as the sailors lingered at the main-mast. "Mr. Starbuck, drive'em     |
|aft." "Strike the tent there!"--was the next order. As I hinted before, this    |
|whalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the Pequod, for|
|thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known to be the next thing  |
|to heaving up the anchor. "Man the capstan! Blood and thunder!--jump!"--was     |
|the next command, and the crew sprang for the handspikes. Now in getting under  |
|weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot is the forward part of the   |
|ship. And here Bildad, who, with Peleg, be it known, in addition to his other   |
|officers, was one of the licensed pilots of the port--he being suspected to     |
|have got himself made a pilot in order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all   |
|the ships he was concerned in, for he never piloted any other craft--Bildad,    |
|I say, might now be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the      |
|approaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave of      |
|psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some sort of a   |
|chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good will. Nevertheless,    |
|not three days previous, Bildad had told them that no profane songs would be    |
|allowed on board the Pequod, particularly in getting under weigh; and Charity,  |
|his sister, had placed a small choice copy of Watts in each seaman's berth.     |
|Meantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Peleg ripped and swore |
|astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he would sink the ship    |
|before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I paused on my handspike, and  |
|told Queequeg to do the same, thinking of the perils we both ran, in starting   |
|on the voyage with such a devil for a pilot. I was comforting myself, however,  |
|with the thought that in pious Bildad might be found some salvation, spite of   |
|his seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in   |
|my rear, and turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Peleg in |
|the act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my first    |
|kick. "Is that the way they heave in the marchant service?" he roared. "Spring, |
|thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don't ye spring, I say, all|
|of ye--spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red whiskers; spring there,   |
|Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I say, all of ye, and spring your |
|eyes out!" And so saying, he moved along the windlass, here and there using his |
|leg very freely, while imperturbable Bildad kept leading off with his psalmody. |
|Thinks I, Captain Peleg must have been drinking something to-day. At last the   |
|anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold      |
|Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves  |
|almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as    |
|in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the      |
|moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving   |
|icicles depended from the bows. Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch,  |
|and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent    |
|the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang,   |
|his steady notes were heard,-- "Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand   |
|dressed in living green. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled   |
|between." Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then.       |
|They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the   |
|boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet,     |
|it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so   |
|eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted,    |
|remains at midsummer. At last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were|
|needed no longer. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging     |
|alongside. It was curious and not unpleasing, how Peleg and Bildad were affected|
|at this juncture, especially Captain Bildad. For loath to depart, yet; very     |
|loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a voyage--beyond |
|both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his hard earned dollars    |
|were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate sailed as captain; a man almost |
|as old as he, once more starting to encounter all the terrors of the pitiless   |
|jaw; loath to say good-bye to a thing so every way brimful of every interest to |
|him,--poor old Bildad lingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran   |
|down into the cabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck,   |
|and looked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only bounded|
|by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the land; looked aloft;|
|looked right and left; looked everywhere and nowhere; and at last, mechanically |
|coiling a rope upon its pin, convulsively grasped stout Peleg by the hand, and  |
|holding up a lantern, for a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much |
|as to say, "Nevertheless, friend Peleg, I can stand it; yes, I can." As for     |
|Peleg himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all his philosophy,  |
|there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern came too near. And he,  |
|too, did not a little run from cabin to deck--now a word below, and now a word  |
|with Starbuck, the chief mate. But, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a   |
|final sort of look about him,--"Captain Bildad--come, old shipmate, we must go. |
|Back the main-yard there! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now!     |
|Careful, careful!--come, Bildad, boy--say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck--luck |
|to ye, Mr. Stubb--luck to ye, Mr. Flask--good-bye and good luck to ye all--and  |
|this day three years I'll have a hot supper smoking for ye in old Nantucket.    |
|Hurrah and away!" "God bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men," murmured|
|old Bildad, almost incoherently. "I hope ye'll have fine weather now, so that   |
|Captain Ahab may soon be moving among ye--a pleasant sun is all he needs,       |
|and ye'll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be careful in the     |
|hunt, ye mates. Don't stave the boats needlessly, ye harpooneers; good white    |
|cedar plank is raised full three per cent. within the year. Don't forget your   |
|prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind that cooper don't waste the spare staves.   |
|Oh! the sail-needles are in the green locker! Don't whale it too much a' Lord's |
|days, men; but don't miss a fair chance either, that's rejecting Heaven's good  |
|gifts. Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I  |
|thought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Flask, beware of fornication. Good-bye,|
|good-bye! Don't keep that cheese too long down in the hold, Mr. Starbuck; it'll |
|spoil. Be careful with the butter--twenty cents the pound it was, and mind ye,  |
|if--" "Come, come, Captain Bildad; stop palavering,--away!" and with that, Peleg|
|hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat. Ship and boat diverged;|
|the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the   |
|two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged|
|like fate into the lone Atlantic. Some chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken |
|of, a tall, newlanded mariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn. When on   |
|that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the   |
|cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I   |
|looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter     |
|just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off  |
|again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his      |
|feet. Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no   |
|epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me    |
|only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably   |
|drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is     |
|pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets,    |
|friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the    |
|land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of|
|land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. |
|With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst   |
|the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's    |
|landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only    |
|friend her bitterest foe! Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see   |
|of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the  |
|intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while     |
|the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous,  |
|slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,   |
|indefinite as God--so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than    |
|be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like,   |
|then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this  |
|agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! |
|Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing--straight up, leaps thy apotheosis! As |
|Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this |
|business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather  |
|unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince    |
|ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales. In the   |
|first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that    |
|among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with |
|what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into any |
|miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general   |
|opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say;   |
|and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F.  |
|(Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed    |
|pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous. Doubtless one leading reason why the    |
|world declines honouring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our    |
|vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively       |
|engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we    |
|are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge      |
|have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honour.  |
|And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall    |
|soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and     |
|which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least    |
|among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge    |
|in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are      |
|comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many |
|soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the idea of peril so   |
|much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure    |
|ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly    |
|recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies    |
|the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared  |
|with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God! But, though the world scouts   |
|at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage;     |
|yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles  |
|that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory! But   |
|look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of scales; see       |
|what we whalemen are, and have been. Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have   |
|admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own      |
|personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to    |
|that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why   |
|did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties     |
|upwards of L1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America     |
|now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy     |
|of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly    |
|consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing,        |
|$20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of |
|$7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?  |
|But this is not the half; look again. I freely assert, that the cosmopolite     |
|philosopher cannot, for his life, point out one single peaceful influence, which|
|within the last sixty years has operated more potentially upon the whole broad  |
|world, taken in one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling.    |
|One way and another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and    |
|so continuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may well be  |
|regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves pregnant from   |
|her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to catalogue all these things.   |
|Let a handful suffice. For many years past the whale-ship has been the pioneer  |
|in ferreting out the remotest and least known parts of the earth. She has       |
|explored seas and archipelagoes which had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver  |
|had ever sailed. If American and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once|
|savage harbors, let them fire salutes to the honour and glory of the whale-ship,|
|which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted between them and the|
|savages. They may celebrate as they will the heroes of Exploring Expeditions,   |
|your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I say that scores of anonymous Captains      |
|have sailed out of Nantucket, that were as great, and greater than your Cook    |
|and your Krusenstern. For in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the   |
|heathenish sharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands,   |
|battled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines and      |
|muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a flourish of in  |
|the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the life-time commonplaces     |
|of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures which Vancouver dedicates three   |
|chapters to, these men accounted unworthy of being set down in the ship's common|
|log. Ah, the world! Oh, the world! Until the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn,   |
|no commerce but colonial, scarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried    |
|on between Europe and the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the     |
|Pacific coast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy of|
|the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might   |
|be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation   |
|of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment   |
|of the eternal democracy in those parts. That great America on the other side   |
|of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman.   |
|After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long      |
|shunned those shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched     |
|there. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony. Moreover,   |
|in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the emigrants were several   |
|times saved from starvation by the benevolent biscuit of the whale-ship luckily |
|dropping an anchor in their waters. The uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess|
|the same truth, and do commercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way|
|for the missionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive    |
|missionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land, Japan, is |
|ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will   |
|be due; for already she is on the threshold. But if, in the face of all this,   |
|you still declare that whaling has no aesthetically noble associations connected|
|with it, then am I ready to shiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you |
|with a split helmet every time. The whale has no famous author, and whaling no  |
|famous chronicler, you will say. THE WHALE NO FAMOUS AUTHOR, AND WHALING NO     |
|FAMOUS CHRONICLER? Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty |
|Job! And who composed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less |
|a prince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down the      |
|words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And who pronounced |
|our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke! True enough, but then  |
|whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no good blood in their veins. NO |
|GOOD BLOOD IN THEIR VEINS? They have something better than royal blood there.   |
|The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel; afterwards, by marriage,  |
|Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of Nantucket, and the ancestress to a      |
|long line of Folgers and harpooneers--all kith and kin to noble Benjamin--this  |
|day darting the barbed iron from one side of the world to the other. Good       |
|again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not respectable. WHALING    |
|NOT RESPECTABLE? Whaling is imperial! By old English statutory law, the whale   |
|is declared "a royal fish."* Oh, that's only nominal! The whale himself has     |
|never figured in any grand imposing way. THE WHALE NEVER FIGURED IN ANY GRAND   |
|IMPOSING WAY? In one of the mighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his   |
|entering the world's capital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from    |
|the Syrian coast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession. |
|Grant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real dignity   |
|in whaling. NO DIGNITY IN WHALING? The dignity of our calling the very heavens  |
|attest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your hat in  |
|presence of the Czar, and take it off to Queequeg! No more! I know a man that,  |
|in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man   |
|more honourable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as   |
|many walled towns. And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet  |
|undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that |
|small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if  |
|hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done|
|than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my    |
|creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe |
|all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College   |
|and my Harvard. In behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught|
|but substantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who should |
|wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell eloquently upon his|
|cause--such an advocate, would he not be blameworthy? It is well known that at  |
|the coronation of kings and queens, even modern ones, a certain curious process |
|of seasoning them for their functions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of |
|state, so called, and there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt,    |
|precisely--who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king's head is solemnly     |
|oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be, though, that they  |
|anoint it with a view of making its interior run well, as they anoint machinery?|
|Much might be ruminated here, concerning the essential dignity of this regal    |
|process, because in common life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow  |
|who anoints his hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature |
|man who uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a quoggy   |
|spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can't amount to much in his        |
|totality. But the only thing to be considered here, is this--what kind of oil   |
|is used at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor |
|castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it  |
|possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest|
|of all oils? Think of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings     |
|and queens with coronation stuff! The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck,    |
|a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man,     |
|and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes,   |
|his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his     |
|live blood would not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some     |
|time of general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which    |
|his state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those summers   |
|had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his thinness, so to    |
|speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties and cares, than it seemed  |
|the indication of any bodily blight. It was merely the condensation of the man. |
|He was by no means ill-looking; quite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an  |
|excellent fit; and closely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and |
|strength, like a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure   |
|for long ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow or    |
|torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was warranted to   |
|do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed to see there the     |
|yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he had calmly confronted     |
|through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life for the most part was a telling|
|pantomime of action, and not a tame chapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy   |
|sobriety and fortitude, there were certain qualities in him which at times      |
|affected, and in some cases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest.       |
|Uncommonly conscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence,|
|the wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline him to    |
|superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some organizations     |
|seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than from ignorance. Outward |
|portents and inward presentiments were his. And if at times these things bent   |
|the welded iron of his soul, much more did his far-away domestic memories of    |
|his young Cape wife and child, tend to bend him still more from the original    |
|ruggedness of his nature, and open him still further to those latent influences |
|which, in some honest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so   |
|often evinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. "I    |
|will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale."    |
|By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage  |
|was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but    |
|that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.     |
|"Aye, aye," said Stubb, the second mate, "Starbuck, there, is as careful a      |
|man as you'll find anywhere in this fishery." But we shall ere long see what    |
|that word "careful" precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost    |
|any other whale hunter. Starbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage   |
|was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon  |
|all mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in this    |
|business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits of the ship,   |
|like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly wasted. Wherefore he had   |
|no fancy for lowering for whales after sun-down; nor for persisting in fighting |
|a fish that too much persisted in fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am     |
|here in this critical ocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed  |
|by them for theirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well   |
|knew. What doom was his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could     |
|he find the torn limbs of his brother? With memories like these in him, and,    |
|moreover, given to a certain superstitiousness, as has been said; the courage   |
|of this Starbuck which could, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have    |
|been extreme. But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized,      |
|and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in    |
|nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, |
|which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and  |
|burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery  |
|chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in   |
|the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational  |
|horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more    |
|spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an |
|enraged and mighty man. But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance,|
|the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the    |
|heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the|
|fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies    |
|and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and   |
|meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand |
|and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows  |
|should run to throw their costliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel    |
|within ourselves, so far within us, that it remains intact though all the outer |
|character seem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of   |
|a valor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight, completely  |
|stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But this august dignity    |
|I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity   |
|which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that       |
|wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands,   |
|radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and  |
|circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality! If, then,|
|to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe     |
|high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most   |
|mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself|
|to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal   |
|light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against |
|all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou Just Spirit of Equality, which       |
|hast spread one royal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it,   |
|thou great democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict, Bunyan,   |
|the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly hammered leaves of    |
|finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old Cervantes; Thou who didst pick |
|up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who didst hurl him upon a war-horse; who    |
|didst thunder him higher than a throne! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly    |
|marchings, ever cullest Thy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me|
|out in it, O God! Stubb was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and   |
|hence, according to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;   |
|neither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an indifferent air; |
|and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the chase, toiling away, calm  |
|and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged for the year. Good-humored, easy,  |
|and careless, he presided over his whale-boat as if the most deadly encounter   |
|were but a dinner, and his crew all invited guests. He was as particular about  |
|the comfortable arrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is  |
|about the snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very death-lock  |
|of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and off-handedly, as a      |
|whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his old rigadig tunes while      |
|flank and flank with the most exasperated monster. Long usage had, for this     |
|Stubb, converted the jaws of death into an easy chair. What he thought of       |
|death itself, there is no telling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might  |
|be a question; but, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a     |
|comfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a sort of    |
|call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there, about something |
|which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and not sooner. What, perhaps,|
|with other things, made Stubb such an easy-going, unfearing man, so cheerily    |
|trudging off with the burden of life in a world full of grave pedlars, all bowed|
|to the ground with their packs; what helped to bring about that almost impious  |
|good-humor of his; that thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his  |
|short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would |
|almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as    |
|without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a   |
|rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them |
|all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter;   |
|then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed,       |
|instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his   |
|mouth. I say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his  |
|peculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air, whether ashore |
|or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless miseries of the numberless    |
|mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in time of the cholera, some people   |
|go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against |
|all mortal tribulations, Stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of |
|disinfecting agent. The third mate was Flask, a native of Tisbury, in Martha's  |
|Vineyard. A short, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,|
|who somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally and        |
|hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of honour with |
|him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost was he to all sense  |
|of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic bulk and mystic ways; and so|
|dead to anything like an apprehension of any possible danger from encountering  |
|them; that in his poor opinion, the wondrous whale was but a species of         |
|magnified mouse, or at least water-rat, requiring only a little circumvention   |
|and some small application of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This  |
|ignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in the      |
|matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a three years'  |
|voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted that length of time.   |
|As a carpenter's nails are divided into wrought nails and cut nails; so mankind |
|may be similarly divided. Little Flask was one of the wrought ones; made to     |
|clinch tight and last long. They called him King-Post on board of the Pequod;   |
|because, in form, he could be well likened to the short, square timber known    |
|by that name in Arctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side   |
|timbers inserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions  |
|of those battering seas. Now these three mates--Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, were|
|momentous men. They it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the |
|Pequod's boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which Captain Ahab |
|would probably marshal his forces to descend on the whales, these three headsmen|
|were as captains of companies. Or, being armed with their long keen whaling     |
|spears, they were as a picked trio of lancers; even as the harpooneers were     |
|flingers of javelins. And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman,  |
|like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or       |
|harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when   |
|the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and moreover, |
|as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy and friendliness; |
|it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the Pequod's       |
|harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged. First of all      |
|was Queequeg, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected for his squire. But   |
|Queequeg is already known. Next was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head,  |
|the most westerly promontory of Martha's Vineyard, where there still exists the |
|last remnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the neighboring   |
|island of Nantucket with many of her most daring harpooneers. In the fishery,   |
|they usually go by the generic name of Gay-Headers. Tashtego's long, lean, sable|
|hair, his high cheek bones, and black rounding eyes--for an Indian, Oriental    |
|in their largeness, but Antarctic in their glittering expression--all this      |
|sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud |
|warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured,     |
|bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the  |
|trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the|
|great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the    |
|infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky    |
|limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier  |
|Puritans, and half-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the   |
|Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third among the |
|harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black negro-savage, with a lion-like   |
|tread--an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops,   |
|so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing    |
|the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on   |
|board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having  |
|been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most |
|frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the  |
|fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they    |
|shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe,      |
|moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was  |
|a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him  |
|seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this      |
|imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked    |
|like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it  |
|said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before    |
|the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though     |
|pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American     |
|whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and   |
|the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and  |
|Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American      |
|liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the|
|muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the|
|outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from    |
|the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers |
|sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the   |
|full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there |
|again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best      |
|whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, ISOLATOES too, I call   |
|such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each ISOLATO living    |
|on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a   |
|set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles    |
|of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod  |
|to lay the world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them  |
|ever come back. Black Little Pip--he never did--oh, no! he went before. Poor    |
|Alabama boy! On the grim Pequod's forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating|
|his tambourine; prelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great      |
|quarter-deck on high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine |
|in glory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there! For several days after     |
|leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab. The mates    |
|regularly relieved each other at the watches, and for aught that could be seen  |
|to the contrary, they seemed to be the only commanders of the ship; only they   |
|sometimes issued from the cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that      |
|after all it was plain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord  |
|and dictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to     |
|penetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin. Every time I ascended to the|
|deck from my watches below, I instantly gazed aft to mark if any strange face   |
|were visible; for my first vague disquietude touching the unknown captain, now  |
|in the seclusion of the sea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely   |
|heightened at times by the ragged Elijah's diabolical incoherences uninvitedly  |
|recurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived of. But |
|poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was almost ready to     |
|smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish prophet of the wharves.   |
|But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or uneasiness--to call it so--which I   |
|felt, yet whenever I came to look about me in the ship, it seemed against all   |
|warrantry to cherish such emotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great  |
|body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any |
|of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me   |
|acquainted with, still I ascribed this--and rightly ascribed it--to the fierce  |
|uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had |
|so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the aspect of the three chief    |
|officers of the ship, the mates, which was most forcibly calculated to allay    |
|these colourless misgivings, and induce confidence and cheerfulness in every    |
|presentment of the voyage. Three better, more likely sea-officers and men,      |
|each in his own different way, could not readily be found, and they were every  |
|one of them Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being   |
|Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting     |
|Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward; and   |
|by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that  |
|merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us. It was one of those|
|less lowering, but still grey and gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when|
|with a fair wind the ship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort  |
|of leaping and melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call   |
|of the forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the taffrail,    |
|foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension; Captain Ahab stood |
|upon his quarter-deck. There seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, |
|nor of the recovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake,     |
|when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or |
|taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high,  |
|broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould,    |
|like Cellini's cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs,   |
|and continuing right down one side of his tawny scorched face and neck, till it |
|disappeared in his clothing, you saw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish.  |
|It resembled that perpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk|
|of a great tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and without  |
|wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from top to bottom, ere |
|running off into the soil, leaving the tree still greenly alive, but branded.   |
|Whether that mark was born with him, or whether it was the scar left by some    |
|desperate wound, no one could certainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout  |
|the voyage little or no allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But   |
|once Tashtego's senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew, superstitiously  |
|asserted that not till he was full forty years old did Ahab become that way     |
|branded, and then it came upon him, not in the fury of any mortal fray, but in  |
|an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this wild hint seemed inferentially negatived, |
|by what a grey Manxman insinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never     |
|before sailed out of Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Ahab.     |
|Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly     |
|invested this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that     |
|no white sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever Captain    |
|Ahab should be tranquilly laid out--which might hardly come to pass, so he      |
|muttered--then, whoever should do that last office for the dead, would find a   |
|birth-mark on him from crown to sole. So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of|
|Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few   |
|moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing |
|to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come    |
|to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of   |
|the sperm whale's jaw. "Aye, he was dismasted off Japan," said the old Gay-Head |
|Indian once; "but like his dismasted craft, he shipped another mast without     |
|coming home for it. He has a quiver of 'em." I was struck with the singular     |
|posture he maintained. Upon each side of the Pequod's quarter deck, and pretty  |
|close to the mizzen shrouds, there was an auger hole, bored about half an inch  |
|or so, into the plank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated,    |
|and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond  |
|the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a    |
|determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward     |
|dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught  |
|to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly     |
|showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled      |
|master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with   |
|a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of     |
|some mighty woe. Ere long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into    |
|his cabin. But after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either |
|standing in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or heavily    |
|walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to grow a little   |
|genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if, when the ship had sailed|
|from home, nothing but the dead wintry bleakness of the sea had then kept him so|
|secluded. And, by and by, it came to pass, that he was almost continually in the|
|air; but, as yet, for all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny|
|deck, he seemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Pequod was only   |
|making a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling preparatives   |
|needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so that there was little |
|or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite Ahab, now; and thus chase away, |
|for that one interval, the clouds that layer upon layer were piled upon his     |
|brow, as ever all clouds choose the loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.     |
|Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant,      |
|holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For,   |
|as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, |
|misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak     |
|will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted   |
|visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings   |
|of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a     |
|look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. Some    |
|days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Pequod now went rolling      |
|through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost perpetually reigns on    |
|the threshold of the eternal August of the Tropic. The warmly cool, clear,      |
|ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of      |
|Persian sherbet, heaped up--flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and    |
|stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in     |
|lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted  |
|suns! For sleeping man, 'twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such |
|seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely |
|lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon     |
|the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory     |
|shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights. And all   |
|these subtle agencies, more and more they wrought on Ahab's texture. Old age    |
|is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do   |
|with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders, the old greybeards      |
|will oftenest leave their berths to visit the night-cloaked deck. It was so     |
|with Ahab; only that now, of late, he seemed so much to live in the open air,   |
|that truly speaking, his visits were more to the cabin, than from the cabin to  |
|the planks. "It feels like going down into one's tomb,"--he would mutter to     |
|himself--"for an old captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go|
|to my grave-dug berth." So, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of |
|the night were set, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band   |
|below; and when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors     |
|flung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt it to     |
|its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when this sort of  |
|steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the silent steersman would  |
|watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old man would emerge, gripping at the |
|iron banister, to help his crippled way. Some considering touch of humanity     |
|was in him; for at times like these, he usually abstained from patrolling the   |
|quarter-deck; because to his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of |
|his ivory heel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that    |
|bony step, that their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of sharks.  |
|But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings; and as with heavy,|
|lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from taffrail to mainmast, Stubb,    |
|the old second mate, came up from below, with a certain unassured, deprecating  |
|humorousness, hinted that if Captain Ahab was pleased to walk the planks, then, |
|no one could say nay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting|
|something indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the insertion |
|into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Stubb, thou didst not know Ahab then. "Am I a   |
|cannon-ball, Stubb," said Ahab, "that thou wouldst wad me that fashion? But     |
|go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave; where such as ye sleep   |
|between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at last.--Down, dog, and kennel!" |
|Starting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly scornful    |
|old man, Stubb was speechless a moment; then said excitedly, "I am not used     |
|to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half like it, sir." "Avast!   |
|gritted Ahab between his set teeth, and violently moving away, as if to avoid   |
|some passionate temptation. "No, sir; not yet," said Stubb, emboldened, "I will |
|not tamely be called a dog, sir." "Then be called ten times a donkey, and a     |
|mule, and an ass, and begone, or I'll clear the world of thee!" As he said this,|
|Ahab advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors in his aspect, that Stubb  |
|involuntarily retreated. "I was never served so before without giving a hard    |
|blow for it," muttered Stubb, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. |
|"It's very queer. Stop, Stubb; somehow, now, I don't well know whether to go    |
|back and strike him, or--what's that?--down here on my knees and pray for him?  |
|Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the first time I ever|
|DID pray. It's queer; very queer; and he's queer too; aye, take him fore and    |
|aft, he's about the queerest old man Stubb ever sailed with. How he flashed at  |
|me!--his eyes like powder-pans! is he mad? Anyway there's something on his mind,|
|as sure as there must be something on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed |
|now, either, more than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don't sleep   |
|then. Didn't that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always   |
|finds the old man's hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the sheets down|
|at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and the pillow a sort of  |
|frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on it? A hot old man! I guess   |
|he's got what some folks ashore call a conscience; it's a kind of Tic-Dolly-row |
|they say--worse nor a toothache. Well, well; I don't know what it is, but the   |
|Lord keep me from catching it. He's full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into |
|the after hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what's      |
|that for, I should like to know? Who's made appointments with him in the hold?  |
|Ain't that queer, now? But there's no telling, it's the old game--Here goes for |
|a snooze. Damn me, it's worth a fellow's while to be born into the world, if    |
|only to fall right asleep. And now that I think of it, that's about the first   |
|thing babies do, and that's a sort of queer, too. Damn me, but all things are   |
|queer, come to think of 'em. But that's against my principles. Think not, is    |
|my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth--So here goes    |
|again. But how's that? didn't he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times  |
|a donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of THAT! He might as well have    |
|kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he DID kick me, and I didn't observe it, I   |
|was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It flashed like a bleached bone. |
|What the devil's the matter with me? I don't stand right on my legs. Coming     |
|afoul of that old man has a sort of turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I    |
|must have been dreaming, though--How? how? how?--but the only way's to stash it;|
|so here goes to hammock again; and in the morning, I'll see how this plaguey    |
|juggling thinks over by daylight." When Stubb had departed, Ahab stood for a    |
|while leaning over the bulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late,  |
|calling a sailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also  |
|his pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool on the  |
|weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked. In old Norse times, the thrones    |
|of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks   |
|of the narwhale. How could one look at Ahab then, seated on that tripod of      |
|bones, without bethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the   |
|plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab. Some     |
|moments passed, during which the thick vapour came from his mouth in quick and  |
|constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. "How now," he soliloquized |
|at last, withdrawing the tube, "this smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe!    |
|hard must it go with me if thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously    |
|toiling, not pleasuring--aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; |
|to windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my      |
|final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I      |
|with this pipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white  |
|vapours among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll  |
|smoke no more--" He tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed |
|in the waves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe     |
|made. With slouched hat, Ahab lurchingly paced the planks. Next morning Stubb   |
|accosted Flask. "Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old   |
|man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick  |
|back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! |
|Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what |
|was still more curious, Flask--you know how curious all dreams are--through     |
|all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that    |
|after all, it was not much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. 'Why,' thinks I,  |
|'what's the row? It's not a real leg, only a false leg.' And there's a mighty   |
|difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow    |
|from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane.  |
|The living member--that makes the living insult, my little man. And thinks I    |
|to myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly toes against that  |
|cursed pyramid--so confoundedly contradictory was it all, all the while, I say, |
|I was thinking to myself, 'what's his leg now, but a cane--a whalebone cane.    |
|Yes,' thinks I, 'it was only a playful cudgelling--in fact, only a whaleboning  |
|that he gave me--not a base kick. Besides,' thinks I, 'look at it once; why, the|
|end of it--the foot part--what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad   |
|footed farmer kicked me, THERE'S a devilish broad insult. But this insult is    |
|whittled down to a point only.' But now comes the greatest joke of the dream,   |
|Flask. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of badger-haired old   |
|merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the shoulders, and slews me round. |
|'What are you 'bout?' says he. Slid! man, but I was frightened. Such a phiz!    |
|But, somehow, next moment I was over the fright. 'What am I about?' says I at   |
|last. 'And what business is that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? |
|Do YOU want a kick?' By the lord, Flask, I had no sooner said that, than he     |
|turned round his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he had|
|for a clout--what do you think, I saw?--why thunder alive, man, his stern was   |
|stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on second thoughts, 'I |
|guess I won't kick you, old fellow.' 'Wise Stubb,' said he, 'wise Stubb;' and   |
|kept muttering it all the time, a sort of eating of his own gums like a chimney |
|hag. Seeing he wasn't going to stop saying over his 'wise Stubb, wise Stubb,' I |
|thought I might as well fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just  |
|lifted my foot for it, when he roared out, 'Stop that kicking!' 'Halloa,' says  |
|I, 'what's the matter now, old fellow?' 'Look ye here,' says he; 'let's argue   |
|the insult. Captain Ahab kicked ye, didn't he?' 'Yes, he did,' says I--'right   |
|HERE it was.' 'Very good,' says he--'he used his ivory leg, didn't he?' 'Yes,   |
|he did,' says I. 'Well then,' says he, 'wise Stubb, what have you to complain   |
|of? Didn't he kick with right good will? it wasn't a common pitch pine leg he   |
|kicked with, was it? No, you were kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful   |
|ivory leg, Stubb. It's an honour; I consider it an honour. Listen, wise Stubb.  |
|In old England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen,|
|and made garter-knights of; but, be YOUR boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by   |
|old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; BE kicked by him; account|
|his kicks honours; and on no account kick back; for you can't help yourself,    |
|wise Stubb. Don't you see that pyramid?' With that, he all of a sudden seemed   |
|somehow, in some queer fashion, to swim off into the air. I snored; rolled over;|
|and there I was in my hammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Flask?" "I |
|don't know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.'" "May be; may be. But it's  |
|made a wise man of me, Flask. D'ye see Ahab standing there, sideways looking    |
|over the stern? Well, the best thing you can do, Flask, is to let the old man   |
|alone; never speak to him, whatever he says. Halloa! What's that he shouts?     |
|Hark!" "Mast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!   |
|If ye see a white one, split your lungs for him! "What do you think of that     |
|now, Flask? ain't there a small drop of something queer about that, eh? A white |
|whale--did ye mark that, man? Look ye--there's something special in the wind.   |
|Stand by for it, Flask. Ahab has that that's bloody on his mind. But, mum;      |
|he comes this way." Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon      |
|we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to     |
|pass; ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls   |
|of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost     |
|indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special      |
|leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow. It is   |
|some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that I would     |
|now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The classification of the      |
|constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best  |
|and latest authorities have laid down. "No branch of Zoology is so much involved|
|as that which is entitled Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820. "It is   |
|not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to the true |
|method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families.... Utter confusion     |
|exists among the historians of this animal" (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale,  |
|A.D. 1839. "Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters."       |
|"Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea." "A field strewn with |
|thorns." "All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists."|
|Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those   |
|lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there     |
|be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with   |
|cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men, small and great, old and  |
|new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in little, written of the whale. |
|Run over a few:--The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir    |
|Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi;   |
|Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier;        |
|Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne;  |
|the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what     |
|ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts  |
|will show. Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen|
|ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer  |
|and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of the Greenland |
|or right-whale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby knew nothing    |
|and says nothing of the great sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland    |
|whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland    |
|whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means    |
|the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and   |
|the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the then   |
|fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present    |
|day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this  |
|usurpation has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the leviathanic |
|allusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland  |
|whale, without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time     |
|has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye!        |
|good people all,--the Greenland whale is deposed,--the great sperm whale now    |
|reigneth! There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the     |
|living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree     |
|succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in their    |
|time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and reliable     |
|men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes  |
|is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though |
|mostly confined to scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm whale,    |
|scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other |
|hunted whales, his is an unwritten life. Now the various species of whales need |
|some sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one  |
|for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent    |
|laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon     |
|offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because any human      |
|thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.  |
|I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species,  |
|or--in this place at least--to much of any description. My object here is simply|
|to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the architect,    |
|not the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the   |
|Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after      |
|them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very     |
|pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to  |
|hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal    |
|me. "Will he the (leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him  |
|is vain! But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have    |
|had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will     |
|try. There are some preliminaries to settle. First: The uncertain, unsettled    |
|condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the  |
|fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a  |
|fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate |
|the whales from the fish." But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the     |
|year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express    |
|edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the       |
|Leviathan. The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales  |
|from the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm bilocular      |
|heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem   |
|feminam mammis lactantem," and finally, "ex lege naturae jure meritoque." I     |
|submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, |
|both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that |
|the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted    |
|they were humbug. Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old   |
|fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. |
|This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal respect     |
|does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given you those      |
|items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other   |
|fish are lungless and cold blooded. Next: how shall we define the whale, by     |
|his obvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to come?   |
|To be short, then, a whale is A SPOUTING FISH WITH A HORIZONTAL TAIL. There     |
|you have him. However contracted, that definition is the result of expanded     |
|meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish,    |
|because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more     |
|cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all    |
|the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down   |
|tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, |
|invariably assumes a horizontal position. By the above definition of what a     |
|whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea     |
|creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers;  |
|nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded |
|as alien.* Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be |
|included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand divisions   |
|of the entire whale host. *I am aware that down to the present time, the fish   |
|styled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) |
|are included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a  |
|noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding    |
|on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as    |
|whales; and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of     |
|Cetology. First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary  |
|BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both   |
|small and large. I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO   |
|WHALE. As the type of the FOLIO I present the SPERM WHALE; of the OCTAVO, the   |
|GRAMPUS; of the DUODECIMO, the PORPOISE. FOLIOS. Among these I here include     |
|the following chapters:--I. The SPERM WHALE; II. the RIGHT WHALE; III. the      |
|FIN-BACK WHALE; IV. the HUMP-BACKED WHALE; V. the RAZOR-BACK WHALE; VI. the     |
|SULPHUR-BOTTOM WHALE. BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER I. (SPERM WHALE).--This whale,   |
|among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter    |
|whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and   |
|the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is,   |
|without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of      |
|all whales to encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the    |
|most valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuable  |
|substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other   |
|places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do.    |
|Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm     |
|whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when       |
|his oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days    |
|spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature |
|identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale.   |
|It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of    |
|the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses.   |
|In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not being used for     |
|light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only to be had from the   |
|druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the     |
|course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became known, its original name   |
|was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion    |
|so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation must at last   |
|have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti was really   |
|derived. BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER II. (RIGHT WHALE).--In one respect this is    |
|the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted      |
|by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the    |
|oil specially known as "whale oil," an inferior article in commerce. Among      |
|the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles:   |
|The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True      |
|Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity    |
|of the species thus multitudinously baptised. What then is the whale, which I   |
|include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the   |
|English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English whalemen; the Baliene   |
|Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the|
|whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and   |
|English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have   |
|long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West Coast,  |
|and various other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising   |
|Grounds. Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the    |
|English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree in all   |
|their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact|
|upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based |
|upon the most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history|
|become so repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere treated of   |
|at some length, with reference to elucidating the sperm whale. BOOK I. (FOLIO), |
|CHAPTER III. (FIN-BACK).--Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the      |
|various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in   |
|every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by   |
|passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length  |
|he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is   |
|of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great   |
|lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds   |
|of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he     |
|derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some three or      |
|four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an      |
|angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest     |
|other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be     |
|seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately calm,      |
|and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands     |
|up and casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that    |
|the watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and  |
|wavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back. The |
|Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are man-haters. |
|Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the      |
|remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a|
|tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and|
|velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan   |
|seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark     |
|that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is  |
|sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated  |
|WHALEBONE WHALES, that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone     |
|whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are   |
|little known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched |
|whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen's names for a|
|few sorts. In connection with this appellative of "Whalebone whales," it is of  |
|great importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be convenient |
|in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt  |
|a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or     |
|hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or features     |
|very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of  |
|Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his   |
|kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are     |
|things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of    |
|whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other|
|and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale, |
|each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked    |
|whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the    |
|similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above mentioned.|
|In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular combinations; or, in the   |
|case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to    |
|defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one |
|of the whale-naturalists has split. But it may possibly be conceived that, in   |
|the internal parts of the whale, in his anatomy--there, at least, we shall be   |
|able to hit the right classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in |
|the Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen   |
|that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale.  |
|And if you descend into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will|
|not find distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those |
|external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold   |
|of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that |
|way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only    |
|one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed. BOOK    |
|I. (FOLIO) CHAPTER IV. (HUMP-BACK).--This whale is often seen on the northern   |
|American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and towed into harbor.   |
|He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant   |
|and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently   |
|distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump though a smaller one.    |
|His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and        |
|light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally |
|than any other of them. BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER V. (RAZOR-BACK).--Of this      |
|whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape      |
|Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no  |
|coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a   |
|long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody else. |
|BOOK I. (FOLIO), CHAPTER VI. (SULPHUR-BOTTOM).--Another retiring gentleman,     |
|with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles     |
|in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at least I have never     |
|seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a    |
|distance to study his countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with   |
|rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can     |
|say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer. Thus ends  |
|BOOK I. (FOLIO), and now begins BOOK II. (OCTAVO). OCTAVOES.*--These embrace    |
|the whales of middling magnitude, among which present may be numbered:--I., the |
|GRAMPUS; II., the BLACK FISH; III., the NARWHALE; IV., the THRASHER; V., the    |
|KILLER. *Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.   |
|Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the former|
|order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the  |
|bookbinder's Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not preserve the shape  |
|of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does. BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER I.  |
|(GRAMPUS).--Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, |
|has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep,    |
|yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand      |
|distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for |
|one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet    |
|in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds;  |
|he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and   |
|pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory|
|of the advance of the great sperm whale. BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER II. (BLACK  |
|FISH).--I give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally  |
|they are the best. Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall  |
|say so, and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called,   |
|because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena   |
|Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the circumstance     |
|that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting |
|Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen  |
|feet in length. He is found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of   |
|showing his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a Roman   |
|nose. When not more profitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes      |
|capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic        |
|employment--as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite   |
|alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their  |
|blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty     |
|gallons of oil. BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER III. (NARWHALE), that is, NOSTRIL    |
|WHALE.--Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from    |
|his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is  |
|some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some     |
|exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is    |
|but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed    |
|from the horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an    |
|ill effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy      |
|left-handed man. What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would|
|be hard to say. It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and|
|bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake  |
|in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used |
|for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea,   |
|and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But|
|you cannot prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that|
|however this one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale--however that    |
|may be--it would certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading    |
|pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, |
|and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to   |
|be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain cloistered    |
|old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's horn was in ancient    |
|days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as such, preparations   |
|of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for     |
|fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured  |
|into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great        |
|curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from   |
|that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from   |
|a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; "when    |
|Sir Martin returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter, "on bended knees he  |
|presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a   |
|long period after hung in the castle at Windsor." An Irish author avers that    |
|the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness    |
|another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature. The Narwhale    |
|has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a milk-white ground colour, |
|dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His oil is very superior, clear    |
|and fine; but there is little of it, and he is seldom hunted. He is mostly      |
|found in the circumpolar seas. BOOK II. (OCTAVO), CHAPTER IV. (KILLER).--Of     |
|this whale little is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to  |
|the professed naturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should  |
|say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage--a sort of    |
|Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs    |
|there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death. The Killer is    |
|never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to|
|the name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we  |
|are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included. BOOK II.   |
|(OCTAVO), CHAPTER V. (THRASHER).--This gentleman is famous for his tail, which  |
|he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whale's back,   |
|and as he swims, he works his passage by flogging him; as some schoolmasters get|
|along in the world by a similar process. Still less is known of the Thrasher    |
|than of the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas. Thus ends BOOK  |
|II. (OCTAVO), and begins BOOK III. (DUODECIMO). DUODECIMOES.--These include     |
|the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise. II. The Algerine Porpoise. III.      |
|The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise. To those who have not chanced specially to study    |
|the subject, it may possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding   |
|four or five feet should be marshalled among WHALES--a word, which, in the      |
|popular sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down   |
|above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition       |
|of what a whale is--i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail. BOOK III.     |
|(DUODECIMO), CHAPTER 1. (HUZZA PORPOISE).--This is the common porpoise found    |
|almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; for there are more   |
|than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish them.     |
|I call him thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the    |
|broad sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July       |
|crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full   |
|of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward.      |
|They are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky  |
|omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious   |
|fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A     |
|well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But  |
|the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It |
|is in request among jewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones.   |
|Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that  |
|a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very readily    |
|discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him; and you will then  |
|see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature. BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER  |
|II. (ALGERINE PORPOISE).--A pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in  |
|the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same|
|general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for    |
|him many times, but never yet saw him captured. BOOK III. (DUODECIMO), CHAPTER  |
|III. (MEALY-MOUTHED PORPOISE).--The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found    |
|in the Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he has   |
|hitherto been designated, is that of the fishers--Right-Whale Porpoise, from    |
|the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In     |
|shape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund|
|and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He    |
|has no fins on his back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and  |
|sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though  |
|his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line,  |
|distinct as the mark in a ship's hull, called the "bright waist," that line     |
|streaks him from stem to stern, with two separate colours, black above and white|
|below. The white comprises part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which  |
|makes him look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag.  |
|A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise. |
|Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise    |
|is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of note. But  |
|there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an   |
|American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate  |
|them by their fore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable|
|to future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If any    |
|of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then he can      |
|readily be incorporated into this System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or    |
|Duodecimo magnitude:--The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed |
|Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale;   |
|the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the  |
|Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there      |
|might be quoted other lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of     |
|uncouth names. But I omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help      |
|suspecting them for mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.  |
|Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here, and   |
|at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But    |
|I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great   |
|Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of    |
|the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first       |
|architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God   |
|keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught--nay,   |
|but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience! Concerning|
|the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place as any to set down  |
|a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising from the existence of the  |
|harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown of course in any other marine than|
|the whale-fleet. The large importance attached to the harpooneer's vocation is  |
|evinced by the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries    |
|and more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the person   |
|now called the captain, but was divided between him and an officer called the   |
|Specksynder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter; usage, however, in time      |
|made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In those days, the captain's authority  |
|was restricted to the navigation and general management of the vessel; while    |
|over the whale-hunting department and all its concerns, the Specksynder or      |
|Chief Harpooneer reigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the   |
|corrupted title of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained,     |
|but his former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as senior  |
|Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain's more inferior subalterns.  |
|Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the harpooneers the success of a      |
|whaling voyage largely depends, and since in the American Fishery he is not     |
|only an important officer in the boat, but under certain circumstances (night   |
|watches on a whaling ground) the command of the ship's deck is also his;        |
|therefore the grand political maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally|
|live apart from the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as    |
|their professional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as     |
|their social equal. Now, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at |
|sea, is this--the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and  |
|merchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and so, too, |
|in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in the after part    |
|of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in the captain's cabin, and  |
|sleep in a place indirectly communicating with it. Though the long period of    |
|a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest of all voyages now or ever made   |
|by man), the peculiar perils of it, and the community of interest prevailing    |
|among a company, all of whom, high or low, depend for their profits, not upon   |
|fixed wages, but upon their common luck, together with their common vigilance,  |
|intrepidity, and hard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to    |
|beget a less rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind |
|how much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some primitive  |
|instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious externals, at least, of |
|the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed, and in no instance done away.   |
|Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in which you will see the skipper parading |
|his quarter-deck with an elated grandeur not surpassed in any military navy;    |
|nay, extorting almost as much outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, |
|and not the shabbiest of pilot-cloth. And though of all men the moody captain   |
|of the Pequod was the least given to that sort of shallowest assumption; and    |
|though the only homage he ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience;  |
|though he required no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping        |
|upon the quarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar      |
|circumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he addressed them |
|in unusual terms, whether of condescension or IN TERROREM, or otherwise; yet    |
|even Captain Ahab was by no means unobservant of the paramount forms and usages |
|of the sea. Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind  |
|those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally   |
|making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately  |
|intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise  |
|in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism |
|became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man's intellectual   |
|superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy|
|over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments,|
|always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever  |
|keeps God's true princes of the Empire from the world's hustings; and leaves    |
|the highest honours that this air can give, to those men who become famous      |
|more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the     |
|Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of   |
|the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political  |
|superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility|
|they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the  |
|ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the      |
|plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the|
|tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep   |
|and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as  |
|the one now alluded to. But Ahab, my Captain, still moves before me in all his  |
|Nantucket grimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and    |
|Kings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old whale-hunter   |
|like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings and housings are     |
|denied me. Oh, Ahab! what shall be grand in thee, it must needs be plucked at   |
|from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and featured in the unbodied air!    |
|It is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale loaf-of-bread face   |
|from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord and master; who, sitting   |
|in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking an observation of the sun; and    |
|is now mutely reckoning the latitude on the smooth, medallion-shaped tablet,    |
|reserved for that daily purpose on the upper part of his ivory leg. From his    |
|complete inattention to the tidings, you would think that moody Ahab had not    |
|heard his menial. But presently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings  |
|himself to the deck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, "Dinner,      |
|Mr. Starbuck," disappears into the cabin. When the last echo of his sultan's    |
|step has died away, and Starbuck, the first Emir, has every reason to suppose   |
|that he is seated, then Starbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns    |
|along the planks, and, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some    |
|touch of pleasantness, "Dinner, Mr. Stubb," and descends the scuttle. The       |
|second Emir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the     |
|main brace, to see whether it will be all right with that important rope, he    |
|likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid "Dinner, Mr. Flask," follows |
|after his predecessors. But the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the |
|quarter-deck, seems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping  |
|all sorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his      |
|shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over    |
|the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up    |
|into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he    |
|remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up  |
|the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses,  |
|ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask     |
|enters King Ahab's presence, in the character of Abjectus, or the Slave. It     |
|is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense artificialness    |
|of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck some officers will,       |
|upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and defyingly enough towards their     |
|commander; yet, ten to one, let those very officers the next moment go down to  |
|their customary dinner in that same commander's cabin, and straightway their    |
|inoffensive, not to say deprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at   |
|the head of the table; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore    |
|this difference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of       |
|Babylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously, therein    |
|certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he who in the      |
|rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table |
|of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual     |
|influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's,    |
|for Belshazzar was not the greatest. Who has but once dined his friends, has    |
|tasted what it is to be Caesar. It is a witchery of social czarship which there |
|is no withstanding. Now, if to this consideration you superadd the official     |
|supremacy of a ship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of    |
|that peculiarity of sea-life just mentioned. Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab  |
|presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his|
|warlike but still deferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited |
|to be served. They were as little children before Ahab; and yet, in Ahab, there |
|seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind, their intent   |
|eyes all fastened upon the old man's knife, as he carved the chief dish before  |
|him. I do not suppose that for the world they would have profaned that moment   |
|with the slightest observation, even upon so neutral a topic as the weather. No!|
|And when reaching out his knife and fork, between which the slice of beef was   |
|locked, Ahab thereby motioned Starbuck's plate towards him, the mate received   |
|his meat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little started    |
|if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed it noiselessly;   |
|and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like the Coronation banquet  |
|at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial |
|Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful        |
|silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was|
|dumb. What a relief it was to choking Stubb, when a rat made a sudden racket    |
|in the hold below. And poor little Flask, he was the youngest son, and little   |
|boy of this weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef; his  |
|would have been the drumsticks. For Flask to have presumed to help himself, this|
|must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the first degree. Had he helped|
|himself at that table, doubtless, never more would he have been able to hold his|
|head up in this honest world; nevertheless, strange to say, Ahab never forbade  |
|him. And had Flask helped himself, the chances were Ahab had never so much as   |
|noticed it. Least of all, did Flask presume to help himself to butter. Whether  |
|he thought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its clotting  |
|his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so long a voyage in  |
|such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and therefore was not for him, |
|a subaltern; however it was, Flask, alas! was a butterless man! Another thing.  |
|Flask was the last person down at the dinner, and Flask is the first man up.    |
|Consider! For hereby Flask's dinner was badly jammed in point of time. Starbuck |
|and Stubb both had the start of him; and yet they also have the privilege of    |
|lounging in the rear. If Stubb even, who is but a peg higher than Flask, happens|
|to have but a small appetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, |
|then Flask must bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that  |
|day; for it is against holy usage for Stubb to precede Flask to the deck.       |
|Therefore it was that Flask once admitted in private, that ever since he had    |
|arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he had never known what it|
|was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less. For what he ate did not so much  |
|relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal in him. Peace and satisfaction, thought |
|Flask, have for ever departed from my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish |
|I could fish a bit of old-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when   |
|I was before the mast. There's the fruits of promotion now; there's the vanity  |
|of glory: there's the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any mere    |
|sailor of the Pequod had a grudge against Flask in Flask's official capacity,   |
|all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample vengeance, was to go aft at |
|dinner-time, and get a peep at Flask through the cabin sky-light, sitting silly |
|and dumfoundered before awful Ahab. Now, Ahab and his three mates formed what   |
|may be called the first table in the Pequod's cabin. After their departure,     |
|taking place in inverted order to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared,  |
|or rather was restored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the|
|three harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary legatees.  |
|They made a sort of temporary servants' hall of the high and mighty cabin. In   |
|strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless invisible      |
|domineerings of the captain's table, was the entire care-free license and ease, |
|the almost frantic democracy of those inferior fellows the harpooneers. While   |
|their masters, the mates, seemed afraid of the sound of the hinges of their     |
|own jaws, the harpooneers chewed their food with such a relish that there was   |
|a report to it. They dined like lords; they filled their bellies like Indian    |
|ships all day loading with spices. Such portentous appetites had Queequeg and   |
|Tashtego, that to fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often     |
|the pale Dough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly   |
|quarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he did     |
|not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an ungentlemanly      |
|way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back, harpoon-wise. And once   |
|Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted Dough-Boy's memory by snatching    |
|him up bodily, and thrusting his head into a great empty wooden trencher, while |
|Tashtego, knife in hand, began laying out the circle preliminary to scalping    |
|him. He was naturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this    |
|bread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital nurse. And  |
|what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Ahab, and the periodical |
|tumultuous visitations of these three savages, Dough-Boy's whole life was one   |
|continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after seeing the harpooneers furnished with     |
|all things they demanded, he would escape from their clutches into his little   |
|pantry adjoining, and fearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its      |
|door, till all was over. It was a sight to see Queequeg seated over against     |
|Tashtego, opposing his filed teeth to the Indian's: crosswise to them, Daggoo   |
|seated on the floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to   |
|the low carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low cabin   |
|framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in a ship. But   |
|for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious, not to say dainty.    |
|It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively small mouthfuls he could   |
|keep up the vitality diffused through so broad, baronial, and superb a person.  |
|But, doubtless, this noble savage fed strong and drank deep of the abounding    |
|element of air; and through his dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of |
|the worlds. Not by beef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Queequeg,|
|he had a mortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating--an ugly sound enough--so  |
|much so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any marks of |
|teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear Tashtego singing out  |
|for him to produce himself, that his bones might be picked, the simple-witted   |
|steward all but shattered the crockery hanging round him in the pantry, by his  |
|sudden fits of the palsy. Nor did the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in|
|their pockets, for their lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones,   |
|at dinner, they would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound   |
|did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that    |
|in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some  |
|murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white       |
|waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but   |
|a buckler. In good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea       |
|warriors would rise and depart; to his credulous, fable-mongering ears, all     |
|their martial bones jingling in them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in   |
|scabbards. But, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived |
|there; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were scarcely  |
|ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time, when they passed |
|through it to their own peculiar quarters. In this one matter, Ahab seemed no   |
|exception to most American whale captains, who, as a set, rather incline to     |
|the opinion that by rights the ship's cabin belongs to them; and that it is by  |
|courtesy alone that anybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in  |
|real truth, the mates and harpooneers of the Pequod might more properly be said |
|to have lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it was   |
|something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a moment, only   |
|to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing, residing in the open air. |
|Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin was no companionship; socially,     |
|Ahab was inaccessible. Though nominally included in the census of Christendom,  |
|he was still an alien to it. He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly   |
|Bears lived in settled Missouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed,    |
|that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived    |
|out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old   |
|age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the    |
|sullen paws of its gloom! It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due  |
|rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came round. In most American  |
|whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel's      |
|leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to |
|sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or   |
|five years' voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her--say,    |
|an empty vial even--then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not   |
|till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether|
|relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more. Now, as the business of        |
|standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one,   |
|let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers    |
|of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find     |
|none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must   |
|doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all  |
|Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great   |
|stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale   |
|of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over    |
|the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers,      |
|is an assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that the    |
|first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly      |
|supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those       |
|edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old     |
|astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as |
|the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in  |
|sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built   |
|him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of    |
|his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in     |
|him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who     |
|was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet;    |
|but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post.    |
|Of modern standers-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron,  |
|and bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale, are still  |
|entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon discovering any strange|
|sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of the column of Vendome, stands    |
|with arms folded, some one hundred and fifty feet in the air; careless, now,    |
|who rules the decks below; whether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the    |
|Devil. Great Washington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in    |
|Baltimore, and like one of Hercules' pillars, his column marks that point of    |
|human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral Nelson, also, on a     |
|capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in Trafalgar Square; and ever when   |
|most obscured by that London smoke, token is yet given that a hidden hero is    |
|there; for where there is smoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington,    |
|nor Napoleon, nor Nelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly   |
|invoked to befriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze;|
|however it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the thick haze |
|of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be shunned. It may    |
|seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head standers of the land  |
|with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not so, is plainly evinced by an |
|item for which Obed Macy, the sole historian of Nantucket, stands accountable.  |
|The worthy Obed tells us, that in the early times of the whale fishery, ere     |
|ships were regularly launched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island |
|erected lofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by     |
|means of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house. A few    |
|years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New Zealand,        |
|who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned boats nigh the    |
|beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we then to the one proper  |
|mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned    |
|from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the      |
|helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the   |
|tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative   |
|man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks,   |
|striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you|
|and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even    |
|as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes.    |
|There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled   |
|but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow;  |
|everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling |
|life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; |
|extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary|
|excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall     |
|of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for       |
|dinner--for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, |
|and your bill of fare is immutable. In one of those southern whalesmen, on a    |
|long three or four years' voyage, as often happens, the sum of the various      |
|hours you spend at the mast-head would amount to several entire months. And it  |
|is much to be deplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a     |
|portion of the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of |
|anything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a comfortable|
|localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock, a hearse, a sentry  |
|box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small and snug contrivances in    |
|which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your most usual point of perch is     |
|the head of the t' gallant-mast, where you stand upon two thin parallel sticks  |
|(almost peculiar to whalemen) called the t' gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed   |
|about by the sea, the beginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a    |
|bull's horns. To be sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with   |
|you, in the shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest watch-coat|
|is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul is glued inside of  |
|its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about in it, nor even move out of |
|it, without running great risk of perishing (like an ignorant pilgrim crossing  |
|the snowy Alps in winter); so a watch-coat is not so much of a house as it is   |
|a mere envelope, or additional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or     |
|chest of drawers in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet     |
|of your watch-coat. Concerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the     |
|mast-heads of a southern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little   |
|tents or pulpits, called CROW'S-NESTS, in which the look-outs of a Greenland    |
|whaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In the      |
|fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled "A Voyage among the Icebergs, in  |
|quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the re-discovery of the Lost |
|Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;" in this admirable volume, all standers of |
|mast-heads are furnished with a charmingly circumstantial account of the then   |
|recently invented CROW'S-NEST of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain     |
|Sleet's good craft. He called it the SLEET'S CROW'S-NEST, in honour of himself; |
|he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all ridiculous false |
|delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children after our own names      |
|(we fathers being the original inventors and patentees), so likewise should     |
|we denominate after ourselves any other apparatus we may beget. In shape, the   |
|Sleet's crow's-nest is something like a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, |
|however, where it is furnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward   |
|of your head in a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend  |
|into it through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or side   |
|next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker underneath for |
|umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather rack, in which to keep  |
|your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and other nautical conveniences. When   |
|Captain Sleet in person stood his mast-head in this crow's-nest of his, he tells|
|us that he always had a rifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with  |
|a powder flask and shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or |
|vagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot successfully shoot  |
|at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the water, but to shoot down   |
|upon them is a very different thing. Now, it was plainly a labor of love for    |
|Captain Sleet to describe, as he does, all the little detailed conveniences of  |
|his crow's-nest; but though he so enlarges upon many of these, and though he    |
|treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest,  |
|with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors  |
|resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an|
|error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks,   |
|and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down    |
|blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet     |
|and scientific here, yet, for all his learned "binnacle deviations," "azimuth   |
|compass observations," and "approximate errors," he knows very well, Captain    |
|Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, |
|as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little    |
|case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's nest, within easy    |
|reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and even love the   |
|brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it very ill of him that he   |
|should so utterly ignore that case-bottle, seeing what a faithful friend and    |
|comforter it must have been, while with mittened fingers and hooded head he was |
|studying the mathematics aloft there in that bird's nest within three or four   |
|perches of the pole. But if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed  |
|aloft as Captain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is      |
|greatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those seductive  |
|seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used to lounge up the   |
|rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a chat with Queequeg, or any |
|one else off duty whom I might find there; then ascending a little way further, |
|and throwing a lazy leg over the top-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the  |
|watery pastures, and so at last mount to my ultimate destination. Let me make   |
|a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With  |
|the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I--being left completely |
|to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude--how could I but lightly hold  |
|my obligations to observe all whale-ships' standing orders, "Keep your weather  |
|eye open, and sing out every time." And let me in this place movingly admonish  |
|you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries|
|any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness;    |
|and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware |
|of such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and  |
|this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and    |
|never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all     |
|unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic,|
|melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the carking cares of    |
|earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently |
|perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and|
|in moody phrase ejaculates:-- "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten|
|thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain." Very often do the captains   |
|of such ships take those absent-minded young philosophers to task, upbraiding   |
|them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that    |
|they are so hopelessly lost to all honourable ambition, as that in their        |
|secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain;  |
|those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are   |
|short-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their |
|opera-glasses at home. "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these    |
|lads, "we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a|
|whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here." Perhaps |
|they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon;  |
|but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie  |
|is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts,     |
|that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the  |
|visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature;|
|and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every   |
|dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the     |
|embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually   |
|flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence     |
|it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled      |
|Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.  |
|There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently    |
|rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable   |
|tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand |
|an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over    |
|Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, |
|with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the   |
|summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists! It was not   |
|a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning shortly after      |
|breakfast, Ahab, as was his wont, ascended the cabin-gangway to the deck. There |
|most sea-captains usually walk at that hour, as country gentlemen, after the    |
|same meal, take a few turns in the garden. Soon his steady, ivory stride was    |
|heard, as to and fro he paced his old rounds, upon planks so familiar to his    |
|tread, that they were all over dented, like geological stones, with the peculiar|
|mark of his walk. Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow;  |
|there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints--the foot-prints of his one|
|unsleeping, ever-pacing thought. But on the occasion in question, those dents   |
|looked deeper, even as his nervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so|
|full of his thought was Ahab, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at   |
|the main-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought turn   |
|in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely possessing him, |
|indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of every outer movement. "D'ye  |
|mark him, Flask?" whispered Stubb; "the chick that's in him pecks the shell.    |
|'Twill soon be out." The hours wore on;--Ahab now shut up within his cabin;     |
|anon, pacing the deck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.  |
|It drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the bulwarks, and  |
|inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and with one hand grasping    |
|a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody aft. "Sir!" said the mate,      |
|astonished at an order seldom or never given on ship-board except in some       |
|extraordinary case. "Send everybody aft," repeated Ahab. "Mast-heads, there!    |
|come down!" When the entire ship's company were assembled, and with curious     |
|and not wholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike  |
|the weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Ahab, after rapidly glancing     |
|over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew, started from his   |
|standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him resumed his heavy turns upon |
|the deck. With bent head and half-slouched hat he continued to pace, unmindful  |
|of the wondering whispering among the men; till Stubb cautiously whispered to   |
|Flask, that Ahab must have summoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a  |
|pedestrian feat. But this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:--    |
|"What do ye do when ye see a whale, men?" "Sing out for him!" was the impulsive |
|rejoinder from a score of clubbed voices. "Good!" cried Ahab, with a wild       |
|approval in his tones; observing the hearty animation into which his unexpected |
|question had so magnetically thrown them. "And what do ye next, men?" "Lower    |
|away, and after him!" "And what tune is it ye pull to, men?" "A dead whale or   |
|a stove boat!" More and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew    |
|the countenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to      |
|gaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they themselves  |
|became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions. But, they were       |
|all eagerness again, as Ahab, now half-revolving in his pivot-hole, with one    |
|hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly, almost convulsively grasping it,   |
|addressed them thus:-- "All ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders|
|about a white whale. Look ye! d'ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?"--holding    |
|up a broad bright coin to the sun--"it is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D'ye     |
|see it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul." While the mate was getting the     |
|hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the   |
|skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words |
|was meanwhile lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled  |
|and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his     |
|vitality in him. Receiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the  |
|main-mast with the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the    |
|other, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: "Whosoever of ye raises me a    |
|white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw; whosoever of ye      |
|raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes punctured in his starboard  |
|fluke--look ye, whosoever of ye raises me that same white whale, he shall have  |
|this gold ounce, my boys!" "Huzza! huzza!" cried the seamen, as with swinging   |
|tarpaulins they hailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast. "It's a white   |
|whale, I say," resumed Ahab, as he threw down the topmaul: "a white whale. Skin |
|your eyes for him, men; look sharp for white water; if ye see but a bubble,     |
|sing out." All this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Queequeg had looked on with     |
|even more intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of    |
|the wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was separately    |
|touched by some specific recollection. "Captain Ahab," said Tashtego, "that     |
|white whale must be the same that some call Moby Dick." "Moby Dick?" shouted    |
|Ahab. "Do ye know the white whale then, Tash?" "Does he fan-tail a little       |
|curious, sir, before he goes down?" said the Gay-Header deliberately. "And has  |
|he a curious spout, too," said Daggoo, "very bushy, even for a parmacetty, and  |
|mighty quick, Captain Ahab?" "And he have one, two, three--oh! good many iron in|
|him hide, too, Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, |
|like him--him--" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and     |
|round as though uncorking a bottle--"like him--him--" "Corkscrew!" cried Ahab,  |
|"aye, Queequeg, the harpoons lie all twisted and wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo,  |
|his spout is a big one, like a whole shock of wheat, and white as a pile of     |
|our Nantucket wool after the great annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and    |
|he fan-tails like a split jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Moby    |
|Dick ye have seen--Moby Dick--Moby Dick!" "Captain Ahab," said Starbuck, who,   |
|with Stubb and Flask, had thus far been eyeing his superior with increasing     |
|surprise, but at last seemed struck with a thought which somewhat explained all |
|the wonder. "Captain Ahab, I have heard of Moby Dick--but it was not Moby Dick  |
|that took off thy leg?" "Who told thee that?" cried Ahab; then pausing, "Aye,   |
|Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby  |
|Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he shouted   |
|with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; "Aye,   |
|aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber|
|of me for ever and a day!" Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations|
|he shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the    |
|Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give|
|him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on |
|both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and |
|rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye    |
|do look brave." "Aye, aye!" shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer  |
|to the excited old man: "A sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for     |
|Moby Dick!" "God bless ye," he seemed to half sob and half shout. "God bless    |
|ye, men. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what's this long face  |
|about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby |
|Dick?" "I am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain   |
|Ahab, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I came       |
|here to hunt whales, not my commander's vengeance. How many barrels will thy    |
|vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain Ahab? it will not fetch   |
|thee much in our Nantucket market." "Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer,   |
|Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer,   |
|man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe,    |
|by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me  |
|tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium HERE!" "He smites his   |
|chest," whispered Stubb, "what's that for? methinks it rings most vast, but     |
|hollow." "Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee   |
|from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, |
|seems blasphemous." "Hark ye yet again--the little lower layer. All visible     |
|objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living     |
|act, the undoubted deed--there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts     |
|forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man    |
|will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except |
|by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved      |
|near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks  |
|me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice   |
|sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white    |
|whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him.  |
|Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For     |
|could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort    |
|of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master,  |
|man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off    |
|thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare! So, so;   |
|thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted thee to anger-glow. But look ye,  |
|Starbuck, what is said in heat, that thing unsays itself. There are men from    |
|whom warm words are small indignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go.    |
|Look! see yonder Turkish cheeks of spotted tawn--living, breathing pictures     |
|painted by the sun. The Pagan leopards--the unrecking and unworshipping things, |
|that live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel! The     |
|crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Ahab, in this matter of the  |
|whale? See Stubb! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he snorts to think of it. Stand|
|up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what  |
|is it? Reckon it. 'Tis but to help strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. |
|What is it more? From this one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all       |
|Nantucket, surely he will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched  |
|a whetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee! Speak, |
|but speak!--Aye, aye! thy silence, then, THAT voices thee. (ASIDE) Something    |
|shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in his lungs. Starbuck now is  |
|mine; cannot oppose me now, without rebellion." "God keep me!--keep us all!"    |
|murmured Starbuck, lowly. But in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence   |
|of the mate, Ahab did not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh |
|from the hold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor|
|yet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment their hearts|
|sank in. For again Starbuck's downcast eyes lighted up with the stubbornness    |
|of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the winds blew on; the sails filled  |
|out; the ship heaved and rolled as before. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings!     |
|why stay ye not when ye come? But rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye   |
|shadows! Yet not so much predictions from without, as verifications of the      |
|foregoing things within. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost|
|necessities in our being, these still drive us on. "The measure! the measure!"  |
|cried Ahab. Receiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he   |
|ordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him near the    |
|capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three mates stood at     |
|his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship's company formed a circle  |
|round the group; he stood for an instant searchingly eyeing every man of his    |
|crew. But those wild eyes met his, as the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves  |
|meet the eye of their leader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of    |
|the bison; but, alas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian. "Drink  |
|and pass!" he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the nearest seaman.    |
|"The crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short draughts--long swallows, |
|men; 'tis hot as Satan's hoof. So, so; it goes round excellently. It spiralizes |
|in ye; forks out at the serpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That   |
|way it went, this way it comes. Hand it me--here's a hollow! Men, ye seem the   |
|years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill! "Attend now, my    |
|braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and ye mates, flank me       |
|with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there with your irons; and ye,      |
|stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some sort revive a noble custom of    |
|my fisherman fathers before me. O men, you will yet see that--Ha! boy, come     |
|back? bad pennies come not sooner. Hand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run    |
|brimming again, were't not thou St. Vitus' imp--away, thou ague! "Advance, ye   |
|mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me touch the axis."     |
|So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three level, radiating lances at   |
|their crossed centre; while so doing, suddenly and nervously twitched them;     |
|meanwhile, glancing intently from Starbuck to Stubb; from Stubb to Flask. It    |
|seemed as though, by some nameless, interior volition, he would fain have       |
|shocked into them the same fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of   |
|his own magnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained,    |
|and mystic aspect. Stubb and Flask looked sideways from him; the honest eye of  |
|Starbuck fell downright. "In vain!" cried Ahab; "but, maybe, 'tis well. For did |
|ye three but once take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing,     |
|THAT had perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped ye  |
|dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do appoint    |
|ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there--yon three most honourable  |
|gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain the task? What, when the|
|great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using his tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet   |
|cardinals! your own condescension, THAT shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; |
|ye will it. Cut your seizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!" Silently     |
|obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the detached iron part  |
|of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs up, before him. "Stab me   |
|not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye not the goblet     |
|end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers, advance. The irons! take  |
|them; hold them while I fill!" Forthwith, slowly going from one officer to the  |
|other, he brimmed the harpoon sockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.    |
|"Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow them,    |
|ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha! Starbuck! but the  |
|deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers!|
|drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow--Death to Moby    |
|Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long,     |
|barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the     |
|white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck |
|paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter |
|went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they|
|all dispersed; and Ahab retired within his cabin. I leave a white and turbid    |
|wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong  |
|swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. Yonder, by ever-brimming   |
|goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue.    |
|The diver sun--slow dived from noon--goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies  |
|with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron     |
|Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its  |
|far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds.     |
|'Tis iron--that I know--not gold. 'Tis split, too--that I feel; the jagged edge |
|galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull,  |
|mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight! Dry heat |
|upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset |
|soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish|
|to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the     |
|low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the    |
|midst of Paradise! Good night--good night! (WAVING HIS HAND, HE MOVES FROM THE  |
|WINDOW.) 'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;|
|but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve.  |
|Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me;    |
|and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs   |
|be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They   |
|think me mad--Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild |
|madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be|
|dismembered; and--Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my |
|dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than  |
|ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye    |
|pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do|
|to bullies--Take some one of your own size; don't pommel ME! No, ye've knocked  |
|me down, and I am up again; but YE have run and hidden. Come forth from behind  |
|your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to   |
|ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye   |
|swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is |
|laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, |
|through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!|
|Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way! My soul is more than   |
|matched; she's overmanned; and by a madman! Insufferable sting, that sanity     |
|should ground arms on such a field! But he drilled deep down, and blasted all my|
|reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him  |
|to it. Will I, nill I, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a   |
|cable I have no knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who's over him, he cries;--aye, |
|he would be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below! Oh!  |
|I plainly see my miserable office,--to obey, rebelling; and worse yet, to hate  |
|with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up,  |
|had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow wide. The hated whale has the   |
|round watery world to swim in, as the small gold-fish has its glassy globe. His |
|heaven-insulting purpose, God may wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not    |
|like lead. But my whole clock's run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I|
|have no key to lift again. Oh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have  |
|small touch of human mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea.    |
|The white whale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is |
|forward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life. Foremost  |
|through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled, bantering bow, but      |
|only to drag dark Ahab after it, where he broods within his sternward cabin,    |
|builded over the dead water of the wake, and further on, hunted by its wolfish  |
|gurglings. The long howl thrills me through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the   |
|watch! Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to     |
|knowledge,--as wild, untutored things are forced to feed--Oh, life! 'tis now    |
|that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of |
|me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye|
|grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye blessed influences!  |
|Ha! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!--I've been thinking over it ever since,   |
|and that ha, ha's the final consequence. Why so? Because a laugh's the wisest,  |
|easiest answer to all that's queer; and come what will, one comfort's always    |
|left--that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated. I heard not all his    |
|talk with Starbuck; but to my poor eye Starbuck then looked something as I      |
|the other evening felt. Be sure the old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged     |
|it, knew it; had had the gift, might readily have prophesied it--for when I     |
|clapped my eye upon his skull I saw it. Well, Stubb, WISE Stubb--that's my      |
|title--well, Stubb, what of it, Stubb? Here's a carcase. I know not all that    |
|may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish   |
|leering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra, skirra!    |
|What's my juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying its eyes out?--Giving a   |
|party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as a frigate's pennant,  |
|and so am I--fa, la! lirra, skirra! Oh-- We'll drink to-night with hearts as    |
|light, To love, as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim, on the beaker's       |
|brim, And break on the lips while meeting. A brave stave that--who calls? Mr.   |
|Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir--(ASIDE) he's my superior, he has his too, if I'm not   |
|mistaken.--Aye, aye, sir, just through with this job--coming. Farewell and      |
|adieu to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain! Our   |
|captain's commanded.-- 1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don't be sentimental;    |
|it's bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me! (SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)    |
|Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand, A viewing of those    |
|gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, |
|And by your braces stand, And we'll have one of those fine whales, Hand, boys,  |
|over hand! So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail! While the bold   |
|harpooner is striking the whale! MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells|
|there, forward! 2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye |
|hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call|
|the watch. I've the sort of mouth for that--the hogshead mouth. So, so, (THRUSTS|
|HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there below!|
|Tumble up! DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I   |
|mark this in our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as filliping |
|to others. We sing; they sleep--aye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts.    |
|At 'em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail 'em through it. Tell 'em   |
|to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em it's the resurrection; they must    |
|kiss their last, and come to judgment. That's the way--THAT'S it; thy throat    |
|ain't spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter. FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let's    |
|have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There   |
|comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your     |
|tambourine! PIP. (SULKY AND SLEEPY) Don't know where it is. FRENCH SAILOR.      |
|Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say; merry's the word;   |
|hurrah! Damn me, won't you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the   |
|double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! legs! ICELAND SAILOR. I don't like your |
|floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste. I'm used to ice-floors. I'm sorry to |
|throw cold water on the subject; but excuse me. MALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where's |
|your girls? Who but a fool would take his left hand by his right, and say to    |
|himself, how d'ye do? Partners! I must have partners! SICILIAN SAILOR. Aye;     |
|girls and a green!--then I'll hop with ye; yea, turn grasshopper! LONG-ISLAND   |
|SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there's plenty more of us. Hoe corn when you    |
|may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here comes the music; now for it!  |
|AZORE SAILOR. (ASCENDING, AND PITCHING THE TAMBOURINE UP THE SCUTTLE.) Here you |
|are, Pip; and there's the windlass-bitts; up you mount! Now, boys! (THE HALF    |
|OF THEM DANCE TO THE TAMBOURINE; SOME GO BELOW; SOME SLEEP OR LIE AMONG THE     |
|COILS OF RIGGING. OATHS A-PLENTY.) AZORE SAILOR. (DANCING) Go it, Pip! Bang     |
|it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig it, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies;      |
|break the jinglers! PIP. Jinglers, you say?--there goes another, dropped off;   |
|I pound it so. CHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a     |
|pagoda of thyself. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through it!    |
|Split jibs! tear yourselves! TASHTEGO. (QUIETLY SMOKING) That's a white man;    |
|he calls that fun: humph! I save my sweat. OLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether    |
|those jolly lads bethink them of what they are dancing over. I'll dance over    |
|your grave, I will--that's the bitterest threat of your night-women, that       |
|beat head-winds round corners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and       |
|the green-skulled crews! Well, well; belike the whole world's a ball, as you    |
|scholars have it; and so 'tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads, |
|you're young; I was once. 3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!--whew! this is worse   |
|than pulling after whales in a calm--give us a whiff, Tash. (THEY CEASE DANCING,|
|AND GATHER IN CLUSTERS. MEANTIME THE SKY DARKENS--THE WIND RISES.) LASCAR       |
|SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it'll be douse sail soon. The sky-born, high-tide      |
|Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva! MALTESE SAILOR.      |
|(RECLINING AND SHAKING HIS CAP.) It's the waves--the snow's caps turn to jig    |
|it now. They'll shake their tassels soon. Now would all the waves were women,   |
|then I'd go drown, and chassee with them evermore! There's naught so sweet on   |
|earth--heaven may not match it!--as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in |
|the dance, when the over-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes. SICILIAN|
|SAILOR. (RECLINING.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad--fleet interlacings of     |
|the limbs--lithe swayings--coyings--flutterings! lip! heart! hip! all graze:    |
|unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye, else come satiety. Eh, Pagan?    |
|(NUDGING.) TAHITAN SAILOR. (RECLINING ON A MAT.) Hail, holy nakedness of our    |
|dancing girls!--the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I still    |
|rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven in the wood,   |
|my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn and wilted quite. Ah  |
|me!--not thou nor I can bear the change! How then, if so be transplanted to     |
|yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from Pirohitee's peak of spears, when they  |
|leap down the crags and drown the villages?--The blast! the blast! Up, spine,   |
|and meet it! (LEAPS TO HIS FEET.) PORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing |
|'gainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing   |
|swords, pell-mell they'll go lunging presently. DANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack,    |
|old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou holdest! Well done! The mate there     |
|holds ye to it stiffly. He's no more afraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put |
|there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!  |
|4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell    |
|him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a   |
|pistol--fire your ship right into it! ENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man's |
|a grand old cove! We are the lads to hunt him up his whale! ALL. Aye! aye! OLD  |
|MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort of tree to   |
|live when shifted to any other soil, and here there's none but the crew's cursed|
|clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort of weather when brave hearts   |
|snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at sea. Our captain has his birthmark;      |
|look yonder, boys, there's another in the sky--lurid-like, ye see, all else     |
|pitch black. DAGGOO. What of that? Who's afraid of black's afraid of me! I'm    |
|quarried out of it! SPANISH SAILOR. (ASIDE.) He wants to bully, ah!--the old    |
|grudge makes me touchy (ADVANCING.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable |
|dark side of mankind--devilish dark at that. No offence. DAGGOO (GRIMLY). None. |
|ST. JAGO'S SAILOR. That Spaniard's mad or drunk. But that can't be, or else     |
|in his one case our old Mogul's fire-waters are somewhat long in working. 5TH   |
|NANTUCKET SAILOR. What's that I saw--lightning? Yes. SPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo |
|showing his teeth. DAGGOO (SPRINGING). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin,     |
|white liver! SPANISH SAILOR (MEETING HIM). Knife thee heartily! big frame,      |
|small spirit! ALL. A row! a row! a row! TASHTEGO (WITH A WHIFF). A row a'low,   |
|and a row aloft--Gods and men--both brawlers! Humph! BELFAST SAILOR. A row!     |
|arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row! Plunge in with ye! ENGLISH SAILOR.   |
|Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard's knife! A ring, a ring! OLD MANX SAILOR. Ready  |
|formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring Cain struck Abel. Sweet work,   |
|right work! No? Why then, God, mad'st thou the ring? MATE'S VOICE FROM THE      |
|QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in top-gallant sails! Stand by to reef     |
|topsails! ALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (THEY SCATTER.) PIP    |
|(SHRINKING UNDER THE WINDLASS). Jollies? Lord help such jollies! Crish, crash!  |
|there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower, Pip, here comes the      |
|royal yard! It's worse than being in the whirled woods, the last day of the     |
|year! Who'd go climbing after chestnuts now? But there they go, all cursing,    |
|and here I don't. Fine prospects to 'em; they're on the road to heaven. Hold    |
|on hard! Jimmini, what a squall! But those chaps there are worse yet--they      |
|are your white squalls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here    |
|have I heard all their chat just now, and the white whale--shirr! shirr!--but   |
|spoken of once! and only this evening--it makes me jingle all over like my      |
|tambourine--that anaconda of an old man swore 'em in to hunt him! Oh, thou      |
|big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small   |
|black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel      |
|fear! I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest;    |
|my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I     |
|hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical,   |
|sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab's quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy|
|ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the |
|others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge. For some time past, though  |
|at intervals only, the unaccompanied, secluded White Whale had haunted those    |
|uncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of |
|them knew of his existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly    |
|seen him; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given battle   |
|to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of whale-cruisers;     |
|the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire watery circumference,    |
|many of them adventurously pushing their quest along solitary latitudes, so as  |
|seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth or more on a stretch, to encounter a    |
|single news-telling sail of any sort; the inordinate length of each separate    |
|voyage; the irregularity of the times of sailing from home; all these, with     |
|other circumstances, direct and indirect, long obstructed the spread through    |
|the whole world-wide whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings       |
|concerning Moby Dick. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels reported|
|to have encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or such a meridian,     |
|a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity, which whale, after doing     |
|great mischief to his assailants, had completely escaped them; to some minds    |
|it was not an unfair presumption, I say, that the whale in question must have   |
|been no other than Moby Dick. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been   |
|marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and  |
|malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident    |
|ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part,  |
|were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the   |
|perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause. In    |
|that way, mostly, the disastrous encounter between Ahab and the whale had       |
|hitherto been popularly regarded. And as for those who, previously hearing of   |
|the White Whale, by chance caught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing   |
|they had every one of them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as|
|for any other whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue in|
|these assaults--not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken limbs, or  |
|devouring amputations--but fatal to the last degree of fatality; those repeated |
|disastrous repulses, all accumulating and piling their terrors upon Moby Dick;  |
|those things had gone far to shake the fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom |
|the story of the White Whale had eventually come. Nor did wild rumors of all    |
|sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more horrify the true histories of these|
|deadly encounters. For not only do fabulous rumors naturally grow out of the    |
|very body of all surprising terrible events,--as the smitten tree gives birth   |
|to its fungi; but, in maritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild |
|rumors abound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to. And |
|as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery surpasses    |
|every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and fearfulness of the  |
|rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only are whalemen as a body     |
|unexempt from that ignorance and superstitiousness hereditary to all sailors;   |
|but of all sailors, they are by all odds the most directly brought into contact |
|with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only |
|eye its greatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such |
|remotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a thousand |
|shores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone, or aught hospitable    |
|beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and longitudes, pursuing too    |
|such a calling as he does, the whaleman is wrapped by influences all tending    |
|to make his fancy pregnant with many a mighty birth. No wonder, then, that      |
|ever gathering volume from the mere transit over the widest watery spaces, the  |
|outblown rumors of the White Whale did in the end incorporate with themselves   |
|all manner of morbid hints, and half-formed foetal suggestions of supernatural  |
|agencies, which eventually invested Moby Dick with new terrors unborrowed from  |
|anything that visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally|
|strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White Whale,   |
|few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his jaw. But       |
|there were still other and more vital practical influences at work. Not even    |
|at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm Whale, as fearfully   |
|distinguished from all other species of the leviathan, died out of the minds    |
|of the whalemen as a body. There are those this day among them, who, though     |
|intelligent and courageous enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right  |
|whale, would perhaps--either from professional inexperience, or incompetency,   |
|or timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there are     |
|plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not sailing under the|
|American flag, who have never hostilely encountered the Sperm Whale, but whose  |
|sole knowledge of the leviathan is restricted to the ignoble monster primitively|
|pursued in the North; seated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a    |
|childish fireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern      |
|whaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale anywhere|
|more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows which stem him. And as|
|if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary times thrown its |
|shadow before it; we find some book naturalists--Olassen and Povelson--declaring|
|the Sperm Whale not only to be a consternation to every other creature in the   |
|sea, but also to be so incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for    |
|human blood. Nor even down to so late a time as Cuvier's, were these or almost  |
|similar impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron himself      |
|affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks included) are "struck|
|with the most lively terrors," and "often in the precipitancy of their flight   |
|dash themselves against the rocks with such violence as to cause instantaneous  |
|death." And however the general experiences in the fishery may amend such       |
|reports as these; yet in their full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty      |
|item of Povelson, the superstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of  |
|their vocation, revived in the minds of the hunters. So that overawed by the    |
|rumors and portents concerning him, not a few of the fishermen recalled, in     |
|reference to Moby Dick, the earlier days of the Sperm Whale fishery, when it    |
|was oftentimes hard to induce long practised Right whalemen to embark in the    |
|perils of this new and daring warfare; such men protesting that although other  |
|leviathans might be hopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an  |
|apparition as the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would |
|be inevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. On this head, there are some    |
|remarkable documents that may be consulted. Nevertheless, some there were, who  |
|even in the face of these things were ready to give chase to Moby Dick; and a   |
|still greater number who, chancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely,   |
|without the specific details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious |
|accompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if offered. |
|One of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked with    |
|the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was the unearthly |
|conceit that Moby Dick was ubiquitous; that he had actually been encountered    |
|in opposite latitudes at one and the same instant of time. Nor, credulous as    |
|such minds must have been, was this conceit altogether without some faint       |
|show of superstitious probability. For as the secrets of the currents in the    |
|seas have never yet been divulged, even to the most erudite research; so the    |
|hidden ways of the Sperm Whale when beneath the surface remain, in great part,  |
|unaccountable to his pursuers; and from time to time have originated the most   |
|curious and contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning the|
|mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he transports himself    |
|with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant points. It is a thing well  |
|known to both American and English whale-ships, and as well a thing placed      |
|upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby, that some whales have been     |
|captured far north in the Pacific, in whose bodies have been found the barbs    |
|of harpoons darted in the Greenland seas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in     |
|some of these instances it has been declared that the interval of time between  |
|the two assaults could not have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference,   |
|it has been believed by some whalemen, that the Nor' West Passage, so long a    |
|problem to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the real     |
|living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old times of the      |
|inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there was said to be a      |
|lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the surface); and that still    |
|more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain near Syracuse (whose waters were  |
|believed to have come from the Holy Land by an underground passage); these      |
|fabulous narrations are almost fully equalled by the realities of the whalemen. |
|Forced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and knowing that   |
|after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had escaped alive; it        |
|cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen should go still further    |
|in their superstitions; declaring Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal   |
|(for immortality is but ubiquity in time); that though groves of spears should  |
|be planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he    |
|should ever be made to spout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly   |
|deception; for again in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his     |
|unsullied jet would once more be seen. But even stripped of these supernatural  |
|surmisings, there was enough in the earthly make and incontestable character of |
|the monster to strike the imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so   |
|much his uncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales,  |
|but, as was elsewhere thrown out--a peculiar snow-white wrinkled forehead, and  |
|a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent features; the tokens   |
|whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he revealed his identity, at    |
|a long distance, to those who knew him. The rest of his body was so streaked,   |
|and spotted, and marbled with the same shrouded hue, that, in the end, he       |
|had gained his distinctive appellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed,      |
|literally justified by his vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through |
|a dark blue sea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with     |
|golden gleamings. Nor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue,    |
|nor yet his deformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural    |
|terror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to specific  |
|accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults. More than all,    |
|his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than perhaps aught else. For,    |
|when swimming before his exulting pursuers, with every apparent symptom of      |
|alarm, he had several times been known to turn round suddenly, and, bearing     |
|down upon them, either stave their boats to splinters, or drive them back in    |
|consternation to their ship. Already several fatalities had attended his chase. |
|But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means   |
|unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's   |
|infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he     |
|caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent    |
|agent. Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of   |
|his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats,  |
|and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the |
|whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as|
|if at a birth or a bridal. His three boats stove around him, and oars and men   |
|both whirling in the eddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken|
|prow, had dashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly      |
|seeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the whale. That  |
|captain was Ahab. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped     |
|lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade |
|of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk, no hired Venetian or Malay, could have |
|smote him with more seeming malice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that |
|ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness|
|against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he      |
|at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his    |
|intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the|
|monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel |
|eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. |
|That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion  |
|even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient    |
|Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;--Ahab did not fall down   |
|and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred |
|white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens|
|and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in    |
|it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of |
|life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made   |
|practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the   |
|sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and |
|then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon    |
|it. It is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at the  |
|precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the monster, knife|
|in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate, corporal animosity; and|
|when he received the stroke that tore him, he probably but felt the agonizing   |
|bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to      |
|turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish      |
|lay stretched together in one hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary,      |
|howling Patagonian Cape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled   |
|into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on   |
|the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him,  |
|seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he   |
|was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength    |
|yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, |
|that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving   |
|in his hammock. In a strait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales.  |
|And, when running into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun'sails|
|spread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances, the old   |
|man's delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn swells, and he came    |
|forth from his dark den into the blessed light and air; even then, when he      |
|bore that firm, collected front, however pale, and issued his calm orders once  |
|again; and his mates thanked God the direful madness was now gone; even then,   |
|Ahab, in his hidden self, raved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and   |
|most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured  |
|into some still subtler form. Ahab's full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly  |
|contracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows narrowly,  |
|but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his narrow-flowing      |
|monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that |
|broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That    |
|before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope  |
|may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and   |
|turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having |
|lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more  |
|potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object. |
|This is much; yet Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain |
|to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down from    |
|within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand--however|
|grand and wonderful, now quit it;--and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls,  |
|to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers    |
|of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in     |
|bearded state; an antique buried beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes!   |
|So with a broken throne, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a       |
|Caryatid, he patient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures  |
|of ages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that proud, sad |
|king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young exiled royalties; and   |
|from your grim sire only will the old State-secret come. Now, in his heart,     |
|Ahab had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means are sane, my motive and my  |
|object mad. Yet without power to kill, or change, or shun the fact; he likewise |
|knew that to mankind he did long dissemble; in some sort, did still. But that   |
|thing of his dissembling was only subject to his perceptibility, not to his     |
|will determinate. Nevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling,     |
|that when with ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him  |
|otherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the terrible  |
|casualty which had overtaken him. The report of his undeniable delirium at sea  |
|was likewise popularly ascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added   |
|moodiness which always afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Pequod on  |
|the present voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely, that  |
|far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on account of such |
|dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent isle were inclined to     |
|harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons he was all the better qualified |
|and set on edge, for a pursuit so full of rage and wildness as the bloody hunt  |
|of whales. Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting    |
|fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the    |
|very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of      |
|all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for   |
|that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on   |
|his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that    |
|with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had   |
|purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engrossing   |
|object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his old acquaintances on      |
|shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their    |
|aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man!     |
|They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars  |
|from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural     |
|revenge. Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses |
|a Job's whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of   |
|mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals--morally enfeebled also, by     |
|the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the    |
|invunerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading|
|mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and     |
|packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it  |
|was that they so aboundingly responded to the old man's ire--by what evil magic |
|their souls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the    |
|White Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to be--what|
|the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious understandings, also,  |
|in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have seemed the gliding great demon of   |
|the seas of life,--all this to explain, would be to dive deeper than Ishmael    |
|can go. The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither   |
|leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not   |
|feel the irresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand   |
|still? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the place;  |
|but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see naught in that brute |
|but the deadliest ill. What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, |
|at times, he was to me, as yet remains unsaid. Aside from those more obvious    |
|considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in   |
|any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless |
|horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered   |
|all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I        |
|almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness     |
|of the whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to explain   |
|myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else      |
|all these chapters might be naught. Though in many natural objects, whiteness   |
|refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own,     |
|as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some   |
|way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric,      |
|grand old kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the White Elephants" above   |
|all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of   |
|Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the     |
|Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great   |
|Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial   |
|colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to     |
|the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky   |
|tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant  |
|of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though |
|in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem   |
|of many touching, noble things--the innocence of brides, the benignity of age;  |
|though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum      |
|was the deepest pledge of honour; though in many climes, whiteness typifies     |
|the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the       |
|daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the  |
|higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of    |
|the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white   |
|forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, |
|Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to     |
|the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by      |
|far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature    |
|being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the        |
|annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word   |
|for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred    |
|vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy  |
|pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of    |
|the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are      |
|given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white    |
|before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like   |
|wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and   |
|honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost  |
|idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness     |
|which affrights in blood. This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought  |
|of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with     |
|any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.  |
|Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what   |
|but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? |
|That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even     |
|more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that     |
|not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the  |
|white-shrouded bear or shark. With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly |
|be urged by him who would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not |
|the whiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness |
|of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said,    |
|only rises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness of the   |
|creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love; and     |
|hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar  |
|bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be|
|true; yet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified   |
|terror. As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in      |
|that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the    |
|same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly hit by    |
|the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish mass for the      |
|dead begins with "Requiem eternam" (eternal rest), whence REQUIEM denominating  |
|the mass itself, and any other funeral music. Now, in allusion to the white,    |
|silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness of his habits, |
|the French call him REQUIN. Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those    |
|clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails|
|in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God's great,     |
|unflattering laureate, Nature. I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It    |
|was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my    |
|forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon|
|the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with|
|a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel  |
|wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings      |
|shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost in     |
|supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I     |
|peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed |
|myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever  |
|exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of   |
|towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint,   |
|the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked |
|a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that   |
|name before; is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to   |
|men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman's  |
|name for albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have |
|had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that|
|bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird    |
|to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little   |
|brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet. I assert, then, that in the  |
|wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell;    |
|a truth the more evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds   |
|called grey albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never with such  |
|emotions as when I beheld the Antarctic fowl. But how had the mystic thing been |
|caught? Whisper it not, and I will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as   |
|the fowl floated on the sea. At last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a  |
|lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's time and place; and    |
|then letting it escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man,    |
|was taken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding,     |
|the invoking, and adoring cherubim! Most famous in our Western annals and       |
|Indian traditions is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent     |
|milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the       |
|dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the  |
|elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those days were  |
|only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head   |
|he westward trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads on the   |
|hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his mane, the curving comet of his      |
|tail, invested him with housings more resplendent than gold and silver-beaters  |
|could have furnished him. A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that  |
|unfallen, western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters      |
|revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a      |
|god, bluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid his  |
|aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly streamed      |
|it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects    |
|browsing all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed them   |
|with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he  |
|presented himself, always to the bravest Indians he was the object of trembling |
|reverence and awe. Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary       |
|record of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which  |
|so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it which,  |
|though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain nameless terror. |
|But there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that accessory     |
|and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and Albatross. What is    |
|it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks the eye, as     |
|that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is that whiteness      |
|which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he bears. The Albino is as     |
|well made as other men--has no substantive deformity--and yet this mere aspect  |
|of all-pervading whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest    |
|abortion. Why should this be so? Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in    |
|her least palpable but not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among    |
|her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the  |
|gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White Squall.    |
|Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice omitted so potent  |
|an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart,  |
|when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperate White Hoods    |
|of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place! Nor, in some things, does    |
|the common, hereditary experience of all mankind fail to bear witness to the    |
|supernaturalism of this hue. It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible    |
|quality in the aspect of the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble    |
|pallor lingering there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of |
|consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And from that  |
|pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the shroud in which we wrap |
|them. Nor even in our superstitions do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle   |
|round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog--Yea, while these     |
|terrors seize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when personified   |
|by the evangelist, rides on his pallid horse. Therefore, in his other moods,    |
|symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can     |
|deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar      |
|apparition to the soul. But though without dissent this point be fixed, how     |
|is mortal man to account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can      |
|we, then, by the citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of      |
|whiteness--though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped of all   |
|direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless, |
|is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modified;--can we thus hope |
|to light upon some chance clue to conduct us to the hidden cause we seek? Let   |
|us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety, and without    |
|imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And though, doubtless,  |
|some at least of the imaginative impressions about to be presented may have     |
|been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were entirely conscious of them at     |
|the time, and therefore may not be able to recall them now. Why to the man of   |
|untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely acquainted with the peculiar  |
|character of the day, does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy |
|such long, dreary, speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and|
|hooded with new-fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of   |
|the Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a  |
|White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul? Or what is there apart from|
|the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings (which will not wholly account   |
|for it) that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the  |
|imagination of an untravelled American, than those other storied structures,    |
|its neighbors--the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers, |
|the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods, comes that     |
|gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention of that name, while the  |
|thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or|
|why, irrespective of all latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White   |
|Sea exert such a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea      |
|lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves,   |
|followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a wholly   |
|unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in reading the old  |
|fairy tales of Central Europe, does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests,   |
|whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides through the green of the groves--why|
|is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?     |
|Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling earthquakes;   |
|nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness of arid skies      |
|that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field of leaning spires, wrenched    |
|cope-stones, and crosses all adroop (like canted yards of anchored fleets); and |
|her suburban avenues of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack|
|of cards;--it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,|
|saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and there is a |
|higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps|
|her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay;    |
|spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes     |
|its own distortions. I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon   |
|of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror  |
|of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught     |
|of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely    |
|consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under any form at all|
|approaching to muteness or universality. What I mean by these two statements    |
|may perhaps be respectively elucidated by the following examples. First: The    |
|mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if by night he hear the |
|roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels just enough of trepidation to  |
|sharpen all his faculties; but under precisely similar circumstances, let him be|
|called from his hammock to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky|
|whiteness--as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were    |
|swimming round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded   |
|phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in vain the  |
|lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm they both go down;   |
|he never rests till blue water is under him again. Yet where is the mariner who |
|will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much the fear of striking hidden rocks, as  |
|the fear of that hideous whiteness that so stirred me?" Second: To the native   |
|Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of |
|dread, except, perhaps, in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness|
|reigning at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness  |
|it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it      |
|with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an   |
|unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break  |
|the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the  |
|Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the    |
|powers of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of rainbows|
|speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems a boundless churchyard |
|grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments and splintered crosses. But thou  |
|sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is but a white flag    |
|hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael. Tell me, why |
|this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of Vermont, far removed  |
|from all beasts of prey--why is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake |
|a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see it, but only smells |
|its wild animal muskiness--why will he start, snort, and with bursting eyes     |
|paw the ground in phrensies of affright? There is no remembrance in him of      |
|any gorings of wild creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange   |
|muskiness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience|
|of former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt, of the black bisons |
|of distant Oregon? No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the        |
|instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of     |
|miles from Oregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring   |
|bison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which  |
|this instant they may be trampling into dust. Thus, then, the muffled rollings  |
|of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains; the   |
|desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Ishmael,   |
|are as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt! Though neither  |
|knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic sign gives forth such   |
|hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist. Though |
|in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible   |
|spheres were formed in fright. But not yet have we solved the incantation of    |
|this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and     |
|more strange and far more portentous--why, as we have seen, it is at once the   |
|most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian's  |
|Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most    |
|appalling to mankind. Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the     |
|heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind  |
|with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky  |
|way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the      |
|visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours;    |
|is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning,   |
|in a wide landscape of snows--a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which    |
|we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers,  |
|that all other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--the sweet     |
|tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies,   |
|and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits,     |
|not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that     |
|all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover   |
|nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider |
|that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great      |
|principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and if      |
|operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips      |
|and roses, with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the palsied universe   |
|lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to    |
|wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel    |
|gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect  |
|around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder     |
|ye then at the fiery hunt? "HIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco? It was the   |
|middle-watch; a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in a cordon, extending |
|from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to the scuttle-butt near the    |
|taffrail. In this manner, they passed the buckets to fill the scuttle-butt.     |
|Standing, for the most part, on the hallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they|
|were careful not to speak or rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets  |
|went in the deepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and  |
|the steady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel. It was in the midst of this   |
|repose, that Archy, one of the cordon, whose post was near the after-hatches,   |
|whispered to his neighbor, a Cholo, the words above. "Hist! did you hear that   |
|noise, Cabaco?" "Take the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d'ye mean?" "There |
|it is again--under the hatches--don't you hear it--a cough--it sounded like a   |
|cough." "Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket." "There again--there   |
|it is!--it sounds like two or three sleepers turning over, now!" "Caramba!      |
|have done, shipmate, will ye? It's the three soaked biscuits ye eat for supper  |
|turning over inside of ye--nothing else. Look to the bucket!" "Say what ye will,|
|shipmate; I've sharp ears." "Aye, you are the chap, ain't ye, that heard the    |
|hum of the old Quakeress's knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket;  |
|you're the chap." "Grin away; we'll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there   |
|is somebody down in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I    |
|suspect our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Stubb tell Flask, one  |
|morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the wind." "Tish! the   |
|bucket!" Had you followed Captain Ahab down into his cabin after the squall that|
|took place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his purpose with   |
|his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the transom, and bringing   |
|out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea charts, spread them before him on    |
|his screwed-down table. Then seating himself before it, you would have seen     |
|him intently study the various lines and shadings which there met his eye; and  |
|with slow but steady pencil trace additional courses over spaces that before    |
|were blank. At intervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him,  |
|wherein were set down the seasons and places in which, on various former voyages|
|of various ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen. While thus employed,  |
|the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his head, continually rocked with|
|the motion of the ship, and for ever threw shifting gleams and shadows of lines |
|upon his wrinkled brow, till it almost seemed that while he himself was marking |
|out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also    |
|tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. But it  |
|was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his cabin, Ahab thus  |
|pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were brought out; almost every|
|night some pencil marks were effaced, and others were substituted. For with the |
|charts of all four oceans before him, Ahab was threading a maze of currents     |
|and eddies, with a view to the more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac   |
|thought of his soul. Now, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of      |
|the leviathans, it might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one    |
|solitary creature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem |
|to Ahab, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby calculating   |
|the driftings of the sperm whale's food; and, also, calling to mind the regular,|
|ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular latitudes; could arrive at    |
|reasonable surmises, almost approaching to certainties, concerning the timeliest|
|day to be upon this or that ground in search of his prey. So assured, indeed,   |
|is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the sperm whale's resorting to     |
|given waters, that many hunters believe that, could he be closely observed and  |
|studied throughout the world; were the logs for one voyage of the entire whale  |
|fleet carefully collated, then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found |
|to correspond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the flights of |
|swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made to construct elaborate migratory|
|charts of the sperm whale. Since the above was written, the statement is happily|
|borne out by an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National  |
|Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it appears that    |
|precisely such a chart is in course of completion; and portions of it are       |
|presented in the circular. "This chart divides the ocean into districts of five |
|degrees of latitude by five degrees of longitude; perpendicularly through each  |
|of which districts are twelve columns for the twelve months; and horizontally   |
|through each of which districts are three lines; one to show the number of      |
|days that have been spent in each month in every district, and the two others   |
|to show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have been seen."    |
|Besides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the sperm    |
|whales, guided by some infallible instinct--say, rather, secret intelligence    |
|from the Deity--mostly swim in VEINS, as they are called; continuing their way  |
|along a given ocean-line with such undeviating exactitude, that no ship ever    |
|sailed her course, by any chart, with one tithe of such marvellous precision.   |
|Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a   |
|surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its |
|own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary VEIN in which at these times  |
|he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as|
|the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep |
|from the whale-ship's mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic   |
|zone. The sum is, that at particular seasons within that breadth and along that |
|path, migrating whales may with great confidence be looked for. And hence not   |
|only at substantiated times, upon well known separate feeding-grounds, could    |
|Ahab hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing the widest expanses of water   |
|between those grounds he could, by his art, so place and time himself on his    |
|way, as even then not to be wholly without prospect of a meeting. There was a   |
|circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his delirious but still    |
|methodical scheme. But not so in the reality, perhaps. Though the gregarious    |
|sperm whales have their regular seasons for particular grounds, yet in general  |
|you cannot conclude that the herds which haunted such and such a latitude or    |
|longitude this year, say, will turn out to be identically the same with those   |
|that were found there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and       |
|unquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In general,|
|the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the solitaries and   |
|hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that though Moby Dick had in   |
|a former year been seen, for example, on what is called the Seychelle ground    |
|in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on the Japanese Coast; yet it did not       |
|follow, that were the Pequod to visit either of those spots at any subsequent   |
|corresponding season, she would infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with   |
|some other feeding grounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all     |
|these seemed only his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not   |
|his places of prolonged abode. And where Ahab's chances of accomplishing his    |
|object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to whatever    |
|way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a particular set time or    |
|place were attained, when all possibilities would become probabilities, and,    |
|as Ahab fondly thought, every possibility the next thing to a certainty. That   |
|particular set time and place were conjoined in the one technical phrase--the   |
|Season-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive years, Moby     |
|Dick had been periodically descried, lingering in those waters for awhile, as   |
|the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted interval in any one sign  |
|of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of the deadly encounters with the   |
|white whale had taken place; there the waves were storied with his deeds; there |
|also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful      |
|motive to his vengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering  |
|vigilance with which Ahab threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering hunt,   |
|he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one crowning fact    |
|above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those hopes; nor in the      |
|sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his unquiet heart as to       |
|postpone all intervening quest. Now, the Pequod had sailed from Nantucket at the|
|very beginning of the Season-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable|
|her commander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and then  |
|running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial Pacific in time |
|to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next ensuing season. Yet the   |
|premature hour of the Pequod's sailing had, perhaps, been correctly selected    |
|by Ahab, with a view to this very complexion of things. Because, an interval    |
|of three hundred and sixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval     |
|which, instead of impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous|
|hunt; if by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote    |
|from his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow off the   |
|Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any other waters       |
|haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas, Nor'-Westers, Harmattans, Trades;|
|any wind but the Levanter and Simoon, might blow Moby Dick into the devious     |
|zig-zag world-circle of the Pequod's circumnavigating wake. But granting all    |
|this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it not but a mad idea, this;   |
|that in the broad boundless ocean, one solitary whale, even if encountered,     |
|should be thought capable of individual recognition from his hunter, even as    |
|a white-bearded Mufti in the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes.     |
|For the peculiar snow-white brow of Moby Dick, and his snow-white hump, could   |
|not but be unmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Ahab would mutter    |
|to himself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he would   |
|throw himself back in reveries--tallied him, and shall he escape? His broad fins|
|are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep's ear! And here, his mad mind    |
|would run on in a breathless race; till a weariness and faintness of pondering  |
|came over him; and in the open air of the deck he would seek to recover his     |
|strength. Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed|
|with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes |
|with his own bloody nails in his palms. Often, when forced from his hammock     |
|by exhausting and intolerably vivid dreams of the night, which, resuming his    |
|own intense thoughts through the day, carried them on amid a clashing of        |
|phrensies, and whirled them round and round and round in his blazing brain,     |
|till the very throbbing of his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, |
|as was sometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up    |
|from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and  |
|lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them;   |
|when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild cry would be heard through |
|the ship; and with glaring eyes Ahab would burst from his state room, as though |
|escaping from a bed that was on fire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the  |
|unsuppressable symptoms of some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve,  |
|were but the plainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Ahab,  |
|the scheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Ahab that  |
|had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to burst from it  |
|in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living principle or soul in him;   |
|and in sleep, being for the time dissociated from the characterizing mind, which|
|at other times employed it for its outer vehicle or agent, it spontaneously     |
|sought escape from the scorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which,     |
|for the time, it was no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist      |
|unless leagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Ahab's case, |
|yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme purpose; that       |
|purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced itself against gods and    |
|devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent being of its own. Nay, could    |
|grimly live and burn, while the common vitality to which it was conjoined,      |
|fled horror-stricken from the unbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the     |
|tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed   |
|from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic  |
|being, a ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to colour, and  |
|therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have      |
|created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a      |
|Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very     |
|creature he creates. So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book;   |
|and, indeed, as indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious     |
|particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier|
|part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading    |
|matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in |
|order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity    |
|which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as   |
|to the natural verity of the main points of this affair. I care not to perform  |
|this part of my task methodically; but shall be content to produce the desired  |
|impression by separate citations of items, practically or reliably known to me  |
|as a whaleman; and from these citations, I take it--the conclusion aimed at will|
|naturally follow of itself. First: I have personally known three instances where|
|a whale, after receiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after  |
|an interval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the same |
|hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same private cypher,    |
|have been taken from the body. In the instance where three years intervened     |
|between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I think it may have been something|
|more than that; the man who darted them happening, in the interval, to go in a  |
|trading ship on a voyage to Africa, went ashore there, joined a discovery party,|
|and penetrated far into the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly |
|two years, often endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas,    |
|with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown  |
|regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been on its travels; |
|no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe, brushing with its flanks all  |
|the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose. This man and this whale again came     |
|together, and the one vanquished the other. I say I, myself, have known three   |
|instances similar to this; that is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, |
|upon the second attack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them,|
|afterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so fell out |
|that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the last time distinctly |
|recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the whale's eye, which I had      |
|observed there three years previous. I say three years, but I am pretty sure it |
|was more than that. Here are three instances, then, which I personally know the |
|truth of; but I have heard of many other instances from persons whose veracity  |
|in the matter there is no good ground to impeach. Secondly: It is well known    |
|in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorant the world ashore may be of it,     |
|that there have been several memorable historical instances where a particular  |
|whale in the ocean has been at distant times and places popularly cognisable.   |
|Why such a whale became thus marked was not altogether and originally owing     |
|to his bodily peculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however     |
|peculiar in that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his   |
|peculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly valuable   |
|oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences of the fishery    |
|there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as there did  |
|about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise |
|him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging    |
|by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance.  |
|Like some poor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man,        |
|they make distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they    |
|pursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump for their  |
|presumption. But not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual|
|celebrity--Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he famous in |
|life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death, but he was admitted |
|into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions of a name; had as much a name |
|indeed as Cambyses or Caesar. Was it not so, O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, |
|scarred like an iceberg, who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of     |
|that name, whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not   |
|so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in |
|the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose |
|lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against |
|the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old    |
|tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In plain prose, here are four |
|whales as well known to the students of Cetacean History as Marius or Sylla to  |
|the classic scholar. But this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after |
|at various times creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels,     |
|were finally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and killed     |
|by valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with that express      |
|object as much in view, as in setting out through the Narragansett Woods,       |
|Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture that notorious murderous    |
|savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the Indian King Philip. I do not know   |
|where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two   |
|other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in    |
|all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more     |
|especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances    |
|where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most     |
|landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that   |
|without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the   |
|fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse     |
|and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. First: Though most     |
|men have some vague flitting ideas of the general perils of the grand fishery,  |
|yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid conception of those perils, and the   |
|frequency with which they recur. One reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty   |
|of the actual disasters and deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a   |
|public record at home, however transient and immediately forgotten that record. |
|Do you suppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught      |
|by the whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to the     |
|bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan--do you suppose that that poor      |
|fellow's name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will read to-morrow at  |
|your breakfast? No: because the mails are very irregular between here and New   |
|Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what might be called regular news direct or  |
|indirect from New Guinea? Yet I tell you that upon one particular voyage which  |
|I made to the Pacific, among many others we spoke thirty different ships, every |
|one of which had had a death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three  |
|that had each lost a boat's crew. For God's sake, be economical with your lamps |
|and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man's blood was    |
|spilled for it. Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that   |
|a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that   |
|when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness, they|
|have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare upon  |
|my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the    |
|history of the plagues of Egypt. But fortunately the special point I here seek  |
|can be established upon testimony entirely independent of my own. That point    |
|is this: The Sperm Whale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and   |
|judiciously malicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy,|
|and sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale HAS done it. First: In |
|the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket, was cruising in    |
|the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her boats, and gave chase to |
|a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of the whales were wounded; when,    |
|suddenly, a very large whale escaping from the boats, issued from the shoal,    |
|and bore directly down upon the ship. Dashing his forehead against her hull,    |
|he so stove her in, that in less than "ten minutes" she settled down and fell   |
|over. Not a surviving plank of her has been seen since. After the severest      |
|exposure, part of the crew reached the land in their boats. Being returned home |
|at last, Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific in command of another |
|ship, but the gods shipwrecked him again upon unknown rocks and breakers; for   |
|the second time his ship was utterly lost, and forthwith forswearing the sea,   |
|he has never tempted it since. At this day Captain Pollard is a resident of     |
|Nantucket. I have seen Owen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the time  |
|of the tragedy; I have read his plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed  |
|with his son; and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.  |
|The following are extracts from Chace's narrative: "Every fact seemed to warrant|
|me in concluding that it was anything but chance which directed his operations; |
|he made two several attacks upon the ship, at a short interval between them,    |
|both of which, according to their direction, were calculated to do us the       |
|most injury, by being made ahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two    |
|objects for the shock; to effect which, the exact manoeuvres which he made were |
|necessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated resentment and   |
|fury. He came directly from the shoal which we had just before entered, and in  |
|which we had struck three of his companions, as if fired with revenge for their |
|sufferings." Again: "At all events, the whole circumstances taken together,     |
|all happening before my own eyes, and producing, at the time, impressions in    |
|my mind of decided, calculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many of     |
|which impressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied that I am     |
|correct in my opinion." Here are his reflections some time after quitting the   |
|ship, during a black night an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any |
|hospitable shore. "The dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the fears   |
|of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon hidden rocks,    |
|with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful contemplation, seemed scarcely  |
|entitled to a moment's thought; the dismal looking wreck, and THE HORRID ASPECT |
|AND REVENGE OF THE WHALE, wholly engrossed my reflections, until day again      |
|made its appearance." In another place--p. 45,--he speaks of "THE MYSTERIOUS    |
|AND MORTAL ATTACK OF THE ANIMAL." Secondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket,  |
|was in the year 1807 totally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the    |
|authentic particulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,    |
|though from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual allusions to it. |
|Thirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J---, then commanding an   |
|American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be dining with a party    |
|of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in the harbor of Oahu, Sandwich  |
|Islands. Conversation turning upon whales, the Commodore was pleased to be      |
|sceptical touching the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional    |
|gentlemen present. He peremptorily denied for example, that any whale could so  |
|smite his stout sloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful.   |
|Very good; but there is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore set sail   |
|in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on the way by a    |
|portly sperm whale, that begged a few moments' confidential business with him.  |
|That business consisted in fetching the Commodore's craft such a thwack, that   |
|with all his pumps going he made straight for the nearest port to heave down and|
|repair. I am not superstitious, but I consider the Commodore's interview with   |
|that whale as providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a |
|similar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense. I will now  |
|refer you to Langsdorff's Voyages for a little circumstance in point, peculiarly|
|interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you must know by the way, was     |
|attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern's famous Discovery Expedition in the|
|beginning of the present century. Captain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth|
|chapter: "By the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next     |
|day we were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was very    |
|clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to keep on our fur |
|clothing. For some days we had very little wind; it was not till the nineteenth |
|that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up. An uncommon large whale, the    |
|body of which was larger than the ship itself, lay almost at the surface of     |
|the water, but was not perceived by any one on board till the moment when the   |
|ship, which was in full sail, was almost upon him, so that it was impossible    |
|to prevent its striking against him. We were thus placed in the most imminent   |
|danger, as this gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the ship three   |
|feet at least out of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell altogether,|
|while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck, concluding that we  |
|had struck upon some rock; instead of this we saw the monster sailing off with  |
|the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain D'Wolf applied immediately to the     |
|pumps to examine whether or not the vessel had received any damage from the     |
|shock, but we found that very happily it had escaped entirely uninjured." Now,  |
|the Captain D'Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in question, is a     |
|New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual adventures as a sea-captain,   |
|this day resides in the village of Dorchester near Boston. I have the honour    |
|of being a nephew of his. I have particularly questioned him concerning this    |
|passage in Langsdorff. He substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no|
|means a large one: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased   |
|by my uncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home. In    |
|that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full, too, of honest |
|wonders--the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient Dampier's old chums--I      |
|found a little matter set down so like that just quoted from Langsdorff, that   |
|I cannot forbear inserting it here for a corroborative example, if such be      |
|needed. Lionel, it seems, was on his way to "John Ferdinando," as he calls      |
|the modern Juan Fernandes. "In our way thither," he says, "about four o'clock   |
|in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty leagues from the       |
|Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which put our men in such      |
|consternation that they could hardly tell where they were or what to think;     |
|but every one began to prepare for death. And, indeed, the shock was so sudden  |
|and violent, that we took it for granted the ship had struck against a rock;    |
|but when the amazement was a little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but    |
|found no ground. .... The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their   |
|carriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks. Captain    |
|Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his cabin!" Lionel     |
|then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and seems to substantiate    |
|the imputation by stating that a great earthquake, somewhere about that time,   |
|did actually do great mischief along the Spanish land. But I should not much    |
|wonder if, in the darkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was     |
|after all caused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.   |
|I might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to me,     |
|of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more than one     |
|instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back to their|
|ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the lances hurled  |
|at him from its decks. The English ship Pusie Hall can tell a story on that     |
|head; and, as for his strength, let me say, that there have been examples where |
|the lines attached to a running sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred   |
|to the ship, and secured there; the whale towing her great hull through the     |
|water, as a horse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, |
|if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not    |
|so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction     |
|to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his    |
|character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth, and      |
|retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes. But I must   |
|be content with only one more and a concluding illustration; a remarkable and   |
|most significant one, by which you will not fail to see, that not only is the   |
|most marvellous event in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present   |
|day, but that these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the      |
|ages; so that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon--Verily there is  |
|nothing new under the sun. In the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a    |
|Christian magistrate of Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor  |
|and Belisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own times,    |
|a work every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he has always      |
|been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating historian, except in      |
|some one or two particulars, not at all affecting the matter presently to be    |
|mentioned. Now, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the     |
|term of his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured in   |
|the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed vessels    |
|at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty years. A fact      |
|thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid. Nor is there    |
|any reason it should be. Of what precise species this sea-monster was, is not   |
|mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as well as for other reasons, he must have|
|been a whale; and I am strongly inclined to think a sperm whale. And I will     |
|tell you why. For a long time I fancied that the sperm whale had been always    |
|unknown in the Mediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now   |
|I am certain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the present  |
|constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious resort. But further |
|investigations have recently proved to me, that in modern times there have been |
|isolated instances of the presence of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean. I   |
|am told, on good authority, that on the Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of     |
|the British navy found the skeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war   |
|readily passes through the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same  |
|route, pass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis. In the Propontis, as   |
|far as I can learn, none of that peculiar substance called BRIT is to be found, |
|the aliment of the right whale. But I have every reason to believe that the     |
|food of the sperm whale--squid or cuttle-fish--lurks at the bottom of that sea, |
|because large creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have been    |
|found at its surface. If, then, you properly put these statements together, and |
|reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that, according to all human  |
|reasoning, Procopius's sea-monster, that for half a century stove the ships of a|
|Roman Emperor, must in all probability have been a sperm whale. Though, consumed|
|with the hot fire of his purpose, Ahab in all his thoughts and actions ever had |
|in view the ultimate capture of Moby Dick; though he seemed ready to sacrifice  |
|all mortal interests to that one passion; nevertheless it may have been that    |
|he was by nature and long habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman's      |
|ways, altogether to abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at     |
|least if this were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more    |
|influential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even considering  |
|his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the White Whale might    |
|have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the  |
|more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each   |
|subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted. But   |
|if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still additional      |
|considerations which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his |
|ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish his|
|object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men|
|are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic   |
|his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did      |
|not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority   |
|involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual |
|but stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's       |
|coerced will were Ahab's, so long as Ahab kept his magnet at Starbuck's brain;  |
|still he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred his       |
|captain's quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself from it, or  |
|even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would elapse ere the White  |
|Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck would ever be apt to fall    |
|into open relapses of rebellion against his captain's leadership, unless some   |
|ordinary, prudential, circumstantial influences were brought to bear upon him.  |
|Not only that, but the subtle insanity of Ahab respecting Moby Dick was noways  |
|more significantly manifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in   |
|foreseeing that, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of    |
|that strange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the full |
|terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure background (for few|
|men's courage is proof against protracted meditation unrelieved by action); that|
|when they stood their long night watches, his officers and men must have some   |
|nearer things to think of than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously   |
|the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of    |
|all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable--they live in the varying  |
|outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness--and when retained for any object |
|remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the  |
|end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments  |
|should intervene and hold them healthily suspended for the final dash. Nor was  |
|Ahab unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion mankind disdain all |
|base considerations; but such times are evanescent. The permanent constitutional|
|condition of the manufactured man, thought Ahab, is sordidness. Granting that   |
|the White Whale fully incites the hearts of this my savage crew, and playing    |
|round their savageness even breeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, |
|still, while for the love of it they give chase to Moby Dick, they must also    |
|have food for their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and  |
|chivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two thousand      |
|miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without committing burglaries, |
|picking pockets, and gaining other pious perquisites by the way. Had they been  |
|strictly held to their one final and romantic object--that final and romantic   |
|object, too many would have turned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, |
|thought Ahab, of all hopes of cash--aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let |
|some months go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this same |
|quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would soon cashier |
|Ahab. Nor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related     |
|to Ahab personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps somewhat    |
|prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the Pequod's voyage, Ahab |
|was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he had indirectly laid himself    |
|open to the unanswerable charge of usurpation; and with perfect impunity, both  |
|moral and legal, his crew if so disposed, and to that end competent, could      |
|refuse all further obedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the      |
|command. From even the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible |
|consequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Ahab must of       |
|course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection could only    |
|consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, |
|closely calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it    |
|was possible for his crew to be subjected to. For all these reasons then, and   |
|others perhaps too analytic to be verbally developed here, Ahab plainly saw that|
|he must still in a good degree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose    |
|of the Pequod's voyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but    |
|force himself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general   |
|pursuit of his profession. Be all this as it may, his voice was now often heard |
|hailing the three mast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out,    |
|and not omit reporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without     |
|reward. It was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging about|
|the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters. Queequeg and  |
|I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat, for an additional    |
|lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet somehow preluding was all the |
|scene, and such an incantation of reverie lurked in the air, that each silent   |
|sailor seemed resolved into his own invisible self. I was the attendant or page |
|of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling |
|or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the|
|shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken |
|sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and  |
|unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess did there then|
|reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting   |
|dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I |
|myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There |
|lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning,    |
|unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise|
|interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and    |
|here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny |
|into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent     |
|sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or     |
|weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow     |
|producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; |
|this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both     |
|warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance--aye, chance, free   |
|will, and necessity--nowise incompatible--all interweavingly working together.  |
|The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course--its |
|every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free |
|to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its  |
|play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed  |
|by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either,  |
|and has the last featuring blow at events. Thus we were weaving and weaving     |
|away when I started at a sound so strange, long drawn, and musically wild and   |
|unearthly, that the ball of free will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing  |
|up at the clouds whence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the       |
|cross-trees was that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly    |
|forward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden intervals he   |
|continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that very moment perhaps     |
|being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of whalemen's look-outs perched    |
|as high in the air; but from few of those lungs could that accustomed old cry   |
|have derived such a marvellous cadence as from Tashtego the Indian's. As he     |
|stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and eagerly peering    |
|towards the horizon, you would have thought him some prophet or seer beholding  |
|the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries announcing their coming. "There    |
|she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!" "Where-away?" "On the    |
|lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!" Instantly all was commotion.  |
|The Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and reliable  |
|uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from other tribes of     |
|his genus. "There go flukes!" was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales     |
|disappeared. "Quick, steward!" cried Ahab. "Time! time!" Dough-Boy hurried      |
|below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact minute to Ahab. The ship was|
|now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling before it. Tashtego    |
|reporting that the whales had gone down heading to leeward, we confidently      |
|looked to see them again directly in advance of our bows. For that singular     |
|craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale when, sounding with his head in one   |
|direction, he nevertheless, while concealed beneath the surface, mills round,   |
|and swiftly swims off in the opposite quarter--this deceitfulness of his could  |
|not now be in action; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by  |
|Tashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our vicinity.    |
|One of the men selected for shipkeepers--that is, those not appointed to the    |
|boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the main-mast head. The sailors at   |
|the fore and mizzen had come down; the line tubs were fixed in their places;    |
|the cranes were thrust out; the mainyard was backed, and the three boats swung  |
|over the sea like three samphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the       |
|bulwarks their eager crews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was  |
|expectantly poised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war's men    |
|about to throw themselves on board an enemy's ship. But at this critical instant|
|a sudden exclamation was heard that took every eye from the whale. With a start |
|all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed  |
|fresh formed out of air. The phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting   |
|on the other side of the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting     |
|loose the tackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always |
|been deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the captain's, on |
|account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The figure that now stood by |
|its bows was tall and swart, with one white tooth evilly protruding from its    |
|steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese jacket of black cotton funereally invested   |
|him, with wide black trowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning    |
|this ebonness was a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and|
|coiled round and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the companions of   |
|this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion peculiar to some of the |
|aboriginal natives of the Manillas;--a race notorious for a certain diabolism   |
|of subtilty, and by some honest white mariners supposed to be the paid spies    |
|and secret confidential agents on the water of the devil, their lord, whose     |
|counting-room they suppose to be elsewhere. While yet the wondering ship's      |
|company were gazing upon these strangers, Ahab cried out to the white-turbaned  |
|old man at their head, "All ready there, Fedallah?" "Ready," was the half-hissed|
|reply. "Lower away then; d'ye hear?" shouting across the deck. "Lower away      |
|there, I say." Such was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement |
|the men sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with     |
|a wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a dexterous,        |
|off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the sailors, goat-like, leaped|
|down the rolling ship's side into the tossed boats below. Hardly had they pulled|
|out from under the ship's lee, when a fourth keel, coming from the windward     |
|side, pulled round under the stern, and showed the five strangers rowing Ahab,  |
|who, standing erect in the stern, loudly hailed Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask, to  |
|spread themselves widely, so as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all |
|their eyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of   |
|the other boats obeyed not the command. "Captain Ahab?--" said Starbuck. "Spread|
|yourselves," cried Ahab; "give way, all four boats. Thou, Flask, pull out more  |
|to leeward!" "Aye, aye, sir," cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round   |
|his great steering oar. "Lay back!" addressing his crew. "There!--there!--there |
|again! There she blows right ahead, boys!--lay back!" "Never heed yonder yellow |
|boys, Archy." "Oh, I don't mind'em, sir," said Archy; "I knew it all before now.|
|Didn't I hear 'em in the hold? And didn't I tell Cabaco here of it? What say ye,|
|Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Flask." "Pull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull,|
|my children; pull, my little ones," drawlingly and soothingly sighed Stubb to   |
|his crew, some of whom still showed signs of uneasiness. "Why don't you break   |
|your backbones, my boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat?   |
|Tut! They are only five more hands come to help us--never mind from where--the  |
|more the merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone--devils are good|
|fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that's the stroke for a thousand     |
|pounds; that's the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the gold cup of sperm |
|oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men--all hearts alive! Easy, easy; don't be in    |
|a hurry--don't be in a hurry. Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite   |
|something, you dogs! So, so, so, then:--softly, softly! That's it--that's it!   |
|long and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin    |
|rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will|
|ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes|
|don't ye pull?--pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out! Here!" |
|whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw    |
|his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's it--that's it.     |
|Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her--start her,   |
|my silver-spoons! Start her, marling-spikes!" Stubb's exordium to his crew is   |
|given here at large, because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in |
|general, and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not |
|suppose from this specimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright |
|passions with his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief     |
|peculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a tone so    |
|strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so calculated merely  |
|as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear such queer invocations without|
|pulling for dear life, and yet pulling for the mere joke of the thing. Besides  |
|he all the time looked so easy and indolent himself, so loungingly managed      |
|his steering-oar, and so broadly gaped--open-mouthed at times--that the mere    |
|sight of such a yawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted like a     |
|charm upon the crew. Then again, Stubb was one of those odd sort of humorists,  |
|whose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all inferiors on   |
|their guard in the matter of obeying them. In obedience to a sign from Ahab,    |
|Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across Stubb's bow; and when for a minute    |
|or so the two boats were pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.      |
|"Mr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye please!"   |
|"Halloa!" returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he spoke; still |
|earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set like a flint from      |
|Stubb's. "What think ye of those yellow boys, sir! "Smuggled on board, somehow, |
|before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong, boys!)" in a whisper to his crew,      |
|then speaking out loud again: "A sad business, Mr. Stubb! (seethe her, seethe   |
|her, my lads!) but never mind, Mr. Stubb, all for the best. Let all your crew   |
|pull strong, come what will. (Spring, my men, spring!) There's hogsheads of     |
|sperm ahead, Mr. Stubb, and that's what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm,    |
|sperm's the play! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand." "Aye,   |
|aye, I thought as much," soliloquized Stubb, when the boats diverged, "as soon  |
|as I clapt eye on 'em, I thought so. Aye, and that's what he went into the      |
|after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long suspected. They were hidden down    |
|there. The White Whale's at the bottom of it. Well, well, so be it! Can't be    |
|helped! All right! Give way, men! It ain't the White Whale to-day! Give way!"   |
|Now the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant as the  |
|lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably awakened a sort  |
|of superstitious amazement in some of the ship's company; but Archy's fancied   |
|discovery having some time previous got abroad among them, though indeed not    |
|credited then, this had in some small measure prepared them for the event.      |
|It took off the extreme edge of their wonder; and so what with all this and     |
|Stubb's confident way of accounting for their appearance, they were for the     |
|time freed from superstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant |
|room for all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Ahab's precise agency in the |
|matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows   |
|I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn, as well  |
|as the enigmatical hintings of the unaccountable Elijah. Meantime, Ahab, out    |
|of hearing of his officers, having sided the furthest to windward, was still    |
|ranging ahead of the other boats; a circumstance bespeaking how potent a crew   |
|was pulling him. Those tiger yellow creatures of his seemed all steel and       |
|whalebone; like five trip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of    |
|strength, which periodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal |
|burst boiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen pulling|
|the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and displayed his     |
|naked chest with the whole part of his body above the gunwale, clearly cut      |
|against the alternating depressions of the watery horizon; while at the other   |
|end of the boat Ahab, with one arm, like a fencer's, thrown half backward into  |
|the air, as if to counterbalance any tendency to trip; Ahab was seen steadily   |
|managing his steering oar as in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale   |
|had torn him. All at once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then  |
|remained fixed, while the boat's five oars were seen simultaneously peaked.     |
|Boat and crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in    |
|the rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily down    |
|into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the movement,      |
|though from his closer vicinity Ahab had observed it. "Every man look out       |
|along his oars!" cried Starbuck. "Thou, Queequeg, stand up!" Nimbly springing   |
|up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage stood erect there, and   |
|with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the spot where the chase had last   |
|been descried. Likewise upon the extreme stern of the boat where it was also    |
|triangularly platformed level with the gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly|
|and adroitly balancing himself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft,  |
|and silently eyeing the vast blue eye of the sea. Not very far distant Flask's  |
|boat was also lying breathlessly still; its commander recklessly standing upon  |
|the top of the loggerhead, a stout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising  |
|some two feet above the level of the stern platform. It is used for catching    |
|turns with the whale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a      |
|man's hand, and standing upon such a base as that, Flask seemed perched at      |
|the mast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little     |
|King-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post was full of|
|a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead stand-point of his did by no |
|means satisfy King-Post. "I can't see three seas off; tip us up an oar there,   |
|and let me on to that." Upon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale    |
|to steady his way, swiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his  |
|lofty shoulders for a pedestal. "Good a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?" |
|"That I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you fifty     |
|feet taller." Whereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks    |
|of the boat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm     |
|to Flask's foot, and then putting Flask's hand on his hearse-plumed head and    |
|bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous fling landed   |
|the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was Flask now standing,  |
|Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a breastband to lean against     |
|and steady himself by. At any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see     |
|with what wondrous habitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain     |
|an erect posture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously     |
|perverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily perched  |
|upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the sight of little   |
|Flask mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more curious; for sustaining himself |
|with a cool, indifferent, easy, unthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro |
|to every roll of the sea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back,  |
|flaxen-haired Flask seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the      |
|rider. Though truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Flask would now  |
|and then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby give to  |
|the negro's lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity stamping the living |
|magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her tides and her seasons for    |
|that. Meanwhile Stubb, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing solicitudes. |
|The whales might have made one of their regular soundings, not a temporary dive |
|from mere fright; and if that were the case, Stubb, as his wont in such cases,  |
|it seems, was resolved to solace the languishing interval with his pipe. He     |
|withdrew it from his hatband, where he always wore it aslant like a feather.    |
|He loaded it, and rammed home the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had    |
|he ignited his match across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego,     |
|his harpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed stars,   |
|suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat, crying out in  |
|a quick phrensy of hurry, "Down, down all, and give way!--there they are!" To a |
|landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been visible at that  |
|moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white water, and thin scattered  |
|puffs of vapour hovering over it, and suffusingly blowing off to leeward, like  |
|the confused scud from white rolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated  |
|and tingled, as it were, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron.     |
|Beneath this atmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer |
|of water, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the other      |
|indications, the puffs of vapour they spouted, seemed their forerunning couriers|
|and detached flying outriders. All four boats were now in keen pursuit of that  |
|one spot of troubled water and air. But it bade fair to outstrip them; it flew  |
|on and on, as a mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from    |
|the hills. "Pull, pull, my good boys," said Starbuck, in the lowest possible    |
|but intensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance     |
|from his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two visible    |
|needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much to his crew,    |
|though, nor did his crew say anything to him. Only the silence of the boat was  |
|at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his peculiar whispers, now harsh     |
|with command, now soft with entreaty. How different the loud little King-Post.  |
|"Sing out and say something, my hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach |
|me, beach me on their black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I'll sign     |
|over to you my Martha's Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children, |
|boys. Lay me on--lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring mad!    |
|See! see that white water!" And so shouting, he pulled his hat from his head,   |
|and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up, flirted it far off upon      |
|the sea; and finally fell to rearing and plunging in the boat's stern like a    |
|crazed colt from the prairie. "Look at that chap now," philosophically drawled  |
|Stubb, who, with his unlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his    |
|teeth, at a short distance, followed after--"He's got fits, that Flask has.     |
|Fits? yes, give him fits--that's the very word--pitch fits into 'em. Merrily,   |
|merrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;--merry's the word. Pull,   |
|babes--pull, sucklings--pull, all. But what the devil are you hurrying about?   |
|Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and keep pulling; nothing      |
|more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your knives in two--that's all. Take   |
|it easy--why don't ye take it easy, I say, and burst all your livers and        |
|lungs!" But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew    |
|of his--these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed      |
|light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas    |
|may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder,    |
|and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey. Meanwhile, all the boats tore  |
|on. The repeated specific allusions of Flask to "that whale," as he called the  |
|fictitious monster which he declared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat's   |
|bow with its tail--these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, |
|that they would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look over  |
|the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must put out their |
|eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage pronouncing that they must    |
|have no organs but ears, and no limbs but arms, in these critical moments. It   |
|was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the omnipotent sea;|
|the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled along the eight gunwales,    |
|like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of  |
|the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper  |
|waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound     |
|dip into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain  |
|the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other      |
|side;--all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and the       |
|shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the ivory Pequod    |
|bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like a wild hen after her  |
|screaming brood;--all this was thrilling. Not the raw recruit, marching from the|
|bosom of his wife into the fever heat of his first battle; not the dead man's   |
|ghost encountering the first unknown phantom in the other world;--neither of    |
|these can feel stranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the   |
|first time finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the hunted |
|sperm whale. The dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and|
|more visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows flung   |
|upon the sea. The jets of vapour no longer blended, but tilted everywhere to    |
|right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes. The boats were pulled |
|more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales running dead to leeward. Our  |
|sail was now set, and, with the still rising wind, we rushed along; the boat    |
|going with such madness through the water, that the lee oars could scarcely be  |
|worked rapidly enough to escape being torn from the row-locks. Soon we were     |
|running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither ship nor boat to be seen.|
|"Give way, men," whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the sheet of his |
|sail; "there is time to kill a fish yet before the squall comes. There's white  |
|water again!--close to! Spring!" Soon after, two cries in quick succession on   |
|each side of us denoted that the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they |
|overheard, when with a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: "Stand    |
|up!" and Queequeg, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet. Though not one of the   |
|oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril so close to them ahead, yet    |
|with their eyes on the intense countenance of the mate in the stern of the boat,|
|they knew that the imminent instant had come; they heard, too, an enormous      |
|wallowing sound as of fifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the   |
|boat was still booming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around   |
|us like the erected crests of enraged serpents. "That's his hump. THERE, THERE, |
|give it to him!" whispered Starbuck. A short rushing sound leaped out of the    |
|boat; it was the darted iron of Queequeg. Then all in one welded commotion came |
|an invisible push from astern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a      |
|ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapour shot up near  |
|by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew  |
|were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling |
|cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and   |
|the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the   |
|boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and |
|lashing them across the gunwale, tumbled back to our places. There we sat up to |
|our knees in the sea, the water covering every rib and plank, so that to our    |
|downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from|
|the bottom of the ocean. The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their   |
|bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like |
|a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal  |
|in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the  |
|live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that    |
|storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew darker with the shadows |
|of night; no sign of the ship could be seen. The rising sea forbade all attempts|
|to bale out the boat. The oars were useless as propellers, performing now the   |
|office of life-preservers. So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, |
|after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then  |
|stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of   |
|this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the  |
|heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of |
|a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. Wet,   |
|drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat, we lifted up  |
|our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over the sea, the empty     |
|lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat. Suddenly Queequeg started to his |
|feet, hollowing his hand to his ear. We all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes |
|and yards hitherto muffled by the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the  |
|thick mists were dimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang  |
|into the sea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us   |
|within a distance of not much more than its length. Floating on the waves we saw|
|the abandoned boat, as for one instant it tossed and gaped beneath the ship's   |
|bows like a chip at the base of a cataract; and then the vast hull rolled over  |
|it, and it was seen no more till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for |
|it, were dashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely    |
|landed on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut loose    |
|from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship had given us    |
|up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon some token of our      |
|perishing,--an oar or a lance pole. There are certain queer times and occasions |
|in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe  |
|for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and    |
|more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However,   |
|nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all   |
|events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and   |
|invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down|
|bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects  |
|of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem   |
|to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by   |
|the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am      |
|speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it      |
|comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have |
|seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke. |
|There is nothing like the perils of whaling to breed this free and easy sort    |
|of genial, desperado philosophy; and with it I now regarded this whole voyage   |
|of the Pequod, and the great White Whale its object. "Queequeg," said I, when   |
|they had dragged me, the last man, to the deck, and I was still shaking myself  |
|in my jacket to fling off the water; "Queequeg, my fine friend, does this sort  |
|of thing often happen?" Without much emotion, though soaked through just like   |
|me, he gave me to understand that such things did often happen. "Mr. Stubb,"    |
|said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his oil-jacket, was now     |
|calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; "Mr. Stubb, I think I have heard you say   |
|that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief mate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the  |
|most careful and prudent. I suppose then, that going plump on a flying whale    |
|with your sail set in a foggy squall is the height of a whaleman's discretion?" |
|"Certain. I've lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off Cape Horn." |
|"Mr. Flask," said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing close by;    |
|"you are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you tell me whether    |
|it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Flask, for an oarsman to break    |
|his own back pulling himself back-foremost into death's jaws?" "Can't you twist |
|that smaller?" said Flask. "Yes, that's the law. I should like to see a boat's  |
|crew backing water up to a whale face foremost. Ha, ha! the whale would give    |
|them squint for squint, mind that!" Here then, from three impartial witnesses,  |
|I had a deliberate statement of the entire case. Considering, therefore, that   |
|squalls and capsizings in the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were  |
|matters of common occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the      |
|superlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign my life   |
|into the hands of him who steered the boat--oftentimes a fellow who at that     |
|very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of scuttling the craft with  |
|his own frantic stampings; considering that the particular disaster to our own  |
|particular boat was chiefly to be imputed to Starbuck's driving on to his whale |
|almost in the teeth of a squall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding,|
|was famous for his great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged|
|to this uncommonly prudent Starbuck's boat; and finally considering in what a   |
|devil's chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking all things     |
|together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make a rough draft of   |
|my will. "Queequeg," said I, "come along, you shall be my lawyer, executor,     |
|and legatee." It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering   |
|at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more   |
|fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical life that I     |
|had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded upon the present      |
|occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled away from my heart. Besides,|
|all the days I should now live would be as good as the days that Lazarus lived  |
|after his resurrection; a supplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks   |
|as the case might be. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up     |
|in my chest. I looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost   |
|with a clean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault. Now     |
|then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock, here goes    |
|for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the devil fetch the    |
|hindmost. "Who would have thought it, Flask!" cried Stubb; "if I had but one    |
|leg you would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole with   |
|my timber toe. Oh! he's a wonderful old man!" "I don't think it so strange,     |
|after all, on that account," said Flask. "If his leg were off at the hip, now,  |
|it would be a different thing. That would disable him; but he has one knee,     |
|and good part of the other left, you know." "I don't know that, my little man;  |
|I never yet saw him kneel." Among whale-wise people it has often been argued    |
|whether, considering the paramount importance of his life to the success of     |
|the voyage, it is right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the    |
|active perils of the chase. So Tamerlane's soldiers often argued with tears in  |
|their eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried into the    |
|thickest of the fight. But with Ahab the question assumed a modified aspect.    |
|Considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of      |
|danger; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and        |
|extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises|
|a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a     |
|whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the joint-owners of the Pequod must |
|have plainly thought not. Ahab well knew that although his friends at home      |
|would think little of his entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless     |
|vicissitudes of the chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and   |
|giving his orders in person, yet for Captain Ahab to have a boat actually       |
|apportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt--above all for Captain Ahab|
|to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat's crew, he well knew that |
|such generous conceits never entered the heads of the owners of the Pequod.     |
|Therefore he had not solicited a boat's crew from them, nor had he in any way   |
|hinted his desires on that head. Nevertheless he had taken private measures     |
|of his own touching all that matter. Until Cabaco's published discovery, the    |
|sailors had little foreseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little    |
|while out of port, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the|
|whaleboats for service; when some time after this Ahab was now and then found   |
|bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his own hands for    |
|what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even solicitously cutting    |
|the small wooden skewers, which when the line is running out are pinned over    |
|the groove in the bow: when all this was observed in him, and particularly his  |
|solicitude in having an extra coat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as   |
|if to make it better withstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also |
|the anxiety he evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat,     |
|as it is sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat's bow for bracing   |
|the knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was observed how  |
|often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee fixed in the semi-circular|
|depression in the cleat, and with the carpenter's chisel gouged out a little    |
|here and straightened it a little there; all these things, I say, had awakened  |
|much interest and curiosity at the time. But almost everybody supposed that     |
|this particular preparative heedfulness in Ahab must only be with a view to the |
|ultimate chase of Moby Dick; for he had already revealed his intention to hunt  |
|that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition did by no means involve   |
|the remotest suspicion as to any boat's crew being assigned to that boat. Now,  |
|with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned away; for in a   |
|whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such unaccountable odds and ends|
|of strange nations come up from the unknown nooks and ash-holes of the earth to |
|man these floating outlaws of whalers; and the ships themselves often pick up   |
|such queer castaway creatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits  |
|of wreck, oars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not;     |
|that Beelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin     |
|to chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable excitement    |
|in the forecastle. But be all this as it may, certain it is that while the      |
|subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as     |
|it were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained    |
|a muffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like this,    |
|by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be linked with     |
|Ahab's peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort of a half-hinted     |
|influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even authority over him; all    |
|this none knew. But one cannot sustain an indifferent air concerning Fedallah.  |
|He was such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone      |
|only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and      |
|then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental    |
|isles to the east of the continent--those insulated, immemorial, unalterable    |
|countries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the ghostly   |
|aboriginalness of earth's primal generations, when the memory of the first man  |
|was a distinct recollection, and all men his descendants, unknowing whence he   |
|came, eyed each other as real phantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why   |
|they were created and to what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels|
|indeed consorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the uncanonical|
|Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours. Days, weeks passed, and under easy sail,   |
|the ivory Pequod had slowly swept across four several cruising-grounds; that    |
|off the Azores; off the Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off     |
|the mouth of the Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery    |
|locality, southerly from St. Helena. It was while gliding through these latter  |
|waters that one serene and moonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like   |
|scrolls of silver; and, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed    |
|a silvery silence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was     |
|seen far in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it     |
|looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.  |
|Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight nights, it was his     |
|wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a look-out there, with the same  |
|precision as if it had been day. And yet, though herds of whales were seen by   |
|night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may |
|think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched     |
|aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But|
|when, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive nights   |
|without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence, his unearthly    |
|voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner  |
|started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and    |
|hailed the mortal crew. "There she blows!" Had the trump of judgment blown, they|
|could not have quivered more; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure.   |
|For though it was a most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so   |
|deliriously exciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a   |
|lowering. Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the |
|t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best man   |
|in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up |
|craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of  |
|the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant,     |
|hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along,  |
|as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her--one to mount direct   |
|to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you     |
|watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two     |
|different things were warring. While his one live leg made lively echoes along  |
|the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and  |
|death this old man walked. But though the ship so swiftly sped, and though from |
|every eye, like arrows, the eager glances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more |
|seen that night. Every sailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time. This |
|midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days after, lo!   |
|at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it was descried by all;  |
|but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it disappeared as if it had      |
|never been. And so it served us night after night, till no one heeded it but    |
|to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted into the clear moonlight, or starlight,    |
|as the case might be; disappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or     |
|three; and somehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still   |
|further and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever alluring      |
|us on. Nor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance    |
|with the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested the     |
|Pequod, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that whenever and       |
|wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however far apart latitudes   |
|and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by one self-same whale; and      |
|that whale, Moby Dick. For a time, there reigned, too, a sense of peculiar      |
|dread at this flitting apparition, as if it were treacherously beckoning us     |
|on and on, in order that the monster might turn round upon us, and rend us at   |
|last in the remotest and most savage seas. These temporary apprehensions, so    |
|vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity    |
|of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there    |
|lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so |
|wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, |
|seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow. But, at last, when     |
|turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose    |
|and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked     |
|Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness,     |
|till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks;     |
|then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights      |
|more dismal than before. Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted   |
|hither and thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable      |
|sea-ravens. And every morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were   |
|seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the       |
|hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing  |
|appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless    |
|selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the black sea, as if    |
|its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish    |
|and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred. Cape of Good Hope, do   |
|they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoto, as called of yore; for long allured by the|
|perfidious silences that before had attended us, we found ourselves launched    |
|into this tormented sea, where guilty beings transformed into those fowls and   |
|these fish, seemed condemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in      |
|store, or beat that black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and    |
|unvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still beckoning |
|us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be descried. During all      |
|this blackness of the elements, Ahab, though assuming for the time the almost   |
|continual command of the drenched and dangerous deck, manifested the gloomiest  |
|reserve; and more seldom than ever addressed his mates. In tempestuous times    |
|like these, after everything above and aloft has been secured, nothing more can |
|be done but passively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew     |
|become practical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its accustomed |
|hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Ahab for hours and hours would|
|stand gazing dead to windward, while an occasional squall of sleet or snow      |
|would all but congeal his very eyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven    |
|from the forward part of the ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke    |
|over its bows, stood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better  |
|to guard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a sort    |
|of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened belt. Few    |
|or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by painted sailors   |
|in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift madness and gladness of     |
|the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness of humanity before the shrieks   |
|of the ocean prevailed; still in silence the men swung in the bowlines; still   |
|wordless Ahab stood up to the blast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding  |
|repose he would not seek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck       |
|forget the old man's aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark   |
|how the barometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his    |
|floor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from which     |
|he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the unremoved hat   |
|and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of those charts of tides     |
|and currents which have previously been spoken of. His lantern swung from his   |
|tightly clenched hand. Though the body was erect, the head was thrown back so   |
|that the closed eyes were pointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung|
|from a beam in the ceiling. The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because  |
|without going to the compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform  |
|himself of the course of the ship. Terrible old man! thought Starbuck with      |
|a shudder, sleeping in this gale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.     |
|South-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising ground  |
|for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross) by name. As she  |
|slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the fore-mast-head, I had a good view  |
|of that sight so remarkable to a tyro in the far ocean fisheries--a whaler at   |
|sea, and long absent from home. As if the waves had been fullers, this craft    |
|was bleached like the skeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this   |
|spectral appearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all   |
|her spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred over     |
|with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it was to see      |
|her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They seemed clad in the   |
|skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment that had survived nearly     |
|four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops nailed to the mast, they swayed  |
|and swung over a fathomless sea; and though, when the ship slowly glided close  |
|under our stern, we six men in the air came so nigh to each other that we might |
|almost have leaped from the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet,  |
|those forlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not one  |
|word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being heard from     |
|below. "Ship ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?" But as the strange captain,   |
|leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in the act of putting his trumpet to his  |
|mouth, it somehow fell from his hand into the sea; and the wind now rising      |
|amain, he in vain strove to make himself heard without it. Meantime his ship    |
|was still increasing the distance between. While in various silent ways the     |
|seamen of the Pequod were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at |
|the first mere mention of the White Whale's name to another ship, Ahab for a    |
|moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a boat to board |
|the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But taking advantage of     |
|his windward position, he again seized his trumpet, and knowing by her aspect   |
|that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer and shortly bound home, he loudly    |
|hailed--"Ahoy there! This is the Pequod, bound round the world! Tell them to    |
|address all future letters to the Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if  |
|I am not at home, tell them to address them to--" At that moment the two wakes  |
|were fairly crossed, and instantly, then, in accordance with their singular     |
|ways, shoals of small harmless fish, that for some days before had been placidly|
|swimming by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged  |
|themselves fore and aft with the stranger's flanks. Though in the course of his |
|continual voyagings Ahab must often before have noticed a similar sight, yet,   |
|to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously carry meanings. "Swim   |
|away from me, do ye?" murmured Ahab, gazing over into the water. There seemed   |
|but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of deep helpless sadness    |
|than the insane old man had ever before evinced. But turning to the steersman,  |
|who thus far had been holding the ship in the wind to diminish her headway, he  |
|cried out in his old lion voice,--"Up helm! Keep her off round the world!" Round|
|the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings; but whereto   |
|does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through numberless perils to the   |
|very point whence we started, where those that we left behind secure, were all  |
|the time before us. Were this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we|
|could for ever reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange  |
|than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the    |
|voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase|
|of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims before all human hearts;  |
|while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren      |
|mazes or midway leave us whelmed. The ostensible reason why Ahab did not go on  |
|board of the whaler we had spoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms.  |
|But even had this not been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have      |
|boarded her--judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions--if so it   |
|had been that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer to  |
|the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not to consort, |
|even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he could contribute    |
|some of that information he so absorbingly sought. But all this might remain    |
|inadequately estimated, were not something said here of the peculiar usages     |
|of whaling-vessels when meeting each other in foreign seas, and especially on   |
|a common cruising-ground. If two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New     |
|York State, or the equally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually     |
|encountering each other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life   |
|of them, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment to    |
|interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and resting in     |
|concert: then, how much more natural that upon the illimitable Pine Barrens and |
|Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling vessels descrying each other at the    |
|ends of the earth--off lone Fanning's Island, or the far away King's Mills; how |
|much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not  |
|only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable  |
|contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of|
|vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the|
|men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear|
|domestic things to talk about. For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder,   |
|perhaps, has letters on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have    |
|some papers of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and  |
|thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would |
|receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she   |
|may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all    |
|this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other's track      |
|on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from    |
|home. For one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third,  |
|and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people of   |
|the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and      |
|have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies    |
|of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a    |
|common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. Nor would difference  |
|of country make any very essential difference; that is, so long as both parties |
|speak one language, as is the case with Americans and English. Though, to be    |
|sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often |
|occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between  |
|them; for your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not      |
|fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers   |
|sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers;  |
|regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as   |
|a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the English whalemen does  |
|really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day,    |
|collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years.|
|But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the    |
|Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has |
|a few foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing    |
|the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable--and they are so. Whereas, |
|some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will        |
|oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually    |
|cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and   |
|all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism upon each other's rig.    |
|As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such  |
|a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there  |
|does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about   |
|it at all. As touching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious  |
|hurry, they run away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates,   |
|when they chance to cross each other's cross-bones, the first hail is--"How     |
|many skulls?"--the same way that whalers hail--"How many barrels?" And that     |
|question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal  |
|villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous|
|likenesses. But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,|
|free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler     |
|in any sort of decent weather? She has a "GAM," a thing so utterly unknown      |
|to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance     |
|they should hear of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff about   |
|"spouters" and "blubber-boilers," and such like pretty exclamations. Why it     |
|is that all Merchant-seamen, and also all Pirates and Man-of-War's men, and     |
|Slave-ship sailors, cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this   |
|is a question it would be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates,      |
|say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar   |
|glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at    |
|the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has    |
|no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in      |
|boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman, in that assertion the      |
|pirate has no solid basis to stand on. But what is a GAM? You might wear out    |
|your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never    |
|find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's     |
|ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many  |
|years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees.       |
|Certainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the Lexicon.  |
|With that view, let me learnedly define it. GAM. NOUN--A SOCIAL MEETING OF TWO  |
|(OR MORE) WHALESHIPS, GENERALLY ON A CRUISING-GROUND; WHEN, AFTER EXCHANGING    |
|HAILS, THEY EXCHANGE VISITS BY BOATS' CREWS; THE TWO CAPTAINS REMAINING, FOR    |
|THE TIME, ON BOARD OF ONE SHIP, AND THE TWO CHIEF MATES ON THE OTHER. There     |
|is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten here. All      |
|professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so has the whale     |
|fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the captain is rowed      |
|anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern sheets on a comfortable,      |
|sometimes cushioned seat there, and often steers himself with a pretty little   |
|milliner's tiller decorated with gay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has  |
|no seat astern, no sofa of that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times |
|indeed, if whaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty  |
|old aldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never admits |
|of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete boat's crew must |
|leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or harpooneer is of the number,   |
|that subordinate is the steersman upon the occasion, and the captain, having    |
|no place to sit in, is pulled off to his visit all standing like a pine tree.   |
|And often you will notice that being conscious of the eyes of the whole visible |
|world resting on him from the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is  |
|all alive to the importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs.  |
|Nor is this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting     |
|steering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the after-oar   |
|reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus completely wedged       |
|before and behind, and can only expand himself sideways by settling down on     |
|his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent pitch of the boat will often go far   |
|to topple him, because length of foundation is nothing without corresponding    |
|breadth. Merely make a spread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. |
|Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it   |
|would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself |
|the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as  |
|token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in    |
|his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he  |
|carries them there for ballast. Nevertheless there have occurred instances,     |
|well authenticated ones too, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly |
|critical moment or two, in a sudden squall say--to seize hold of the nearest    |
|oarsman's hair, and hold on there like grim death. The Cape of Good Hope, and   |
|all the watery region round about there, is much like some noted four corners   |
|of a great highway, where you meet more travellers than in any other part. It   |
|was not very long after speaking the Goney that another homeward-bound whaleman,|
|the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned almost wholly by Polynesians. In  |
|the short gam that ensued she gave us strong news of Moby Dick. To some the     |
|general interest in the White Whale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance |
|of the Town-Ho's story, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a      |
|certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of God|
|which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter circumstance, with    |
|its own particular accompaniments, forming what may be called the secret part   |
|of the tragedy about to be narrated, never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or  |
|his mates. For that secret part of the story was unknown to the captain of the  |
|Town-Ho himself. It was the private property of three confederate white seamen  |
|of that ship, one of whom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish    |
|injunctions of secrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep,  |
|and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not   |
|well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did this thing     |
|have on those seamen in the Pequod who came to the full knowledge of it, and    |
|by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter,   |
|that they kept the secret among themselves so that it never transpired abaft    |
|the Pequod's main-mast. Interweaving in its proper place this darker thread     |
|with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange      |
|affair I now proceed to put on lasting record. The ancient whale-cry upon first |
|sighting a whale from the mast-head, still used by whalemen in hunting the      |
|famous Gallipagos terrapin. For my humor's sake, I shall preserve the style in  |
|which I once narrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends,   |
|one saint's eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn.    |
|Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were on the       |
|closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they occasionally     |
|put, and which are duly answered at the time. "Some two years prior to my       |
|first learning the events which I am about rehearsing to you, gentlemen, the    |
|Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket, was cruising in your Pacific here, not      |
|very many days' sail eastward from the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was   |
|somewhere to the northward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps,    |
|according to daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold  |
|than common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But the     |
|captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good luck awaited   |
|him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to quit them, and the   |
|leak not being then considered at all dangerous, though, indeed, they could     |
|not find it after searching the hold as low down as was possible in rather      |
|heavy weather, the ship still continued her cruisings, the mariners working at  |
|the pumps at wide and easy intervals; but no good luck came; more days went     |
|by, and not only was the leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So   |
|much so, that now taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away   |
|for the nearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and   |
|repaired. "Though no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance |
|favoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the way, because|
|his pumps were of the best, and being periodically relieved at them, those      |
|six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the ship free; never mind if the    |
|leak should double on her. In truth, well nigh the whole of this passage being  |
|attended by very prosperous breezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived  |
|in perfect safety at her port without the occurrence of the least fatality,     |
|had it not been for the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder,   |
|and the bitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from  |
|Buffalo. "'Lakeman!--Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?'   |
|said Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass. "On the eastern shore  |
|of our Lake Erie, Don; but--I crave your courtesy--may be, you shall soon hear  |
|further of all that. Now, gentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted      |
|ships, well-nigh as large and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old     |
|Callao to far Manilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America,   |
|had yet been nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly   |
|connected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate, those       |
|grand fresh-water seas of ours,--Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and Superior,    |
|and Michigan,--possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many of the ocean's    |
|noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of races and of climes. They  |
|contain round archipelagoes of romantic isles, even as the Polynesian waters    |
|do; in large part, are shored by two great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic |
|is; they furnish long maritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies  |
|from the East, dotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon    |
|by batteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they have     |
|heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they yield their  |
|beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash from out their peltry |
|wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by ancient and unentered forests,  |
|where the gaunt pines stand like serried lines of kings in Gothic genealogies;  |
|those same woods harboring wild Afric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose|
|exported furs give robes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals     |
|of Buffalo and Cleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the   |
|full-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer, and     |
|the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as direful      |
|as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks are, for out of     |
|sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full many a midnight ship      |
|with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen, though an inlander, Steelkilt     |
|was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean nurtured; as much of an audacious mariner   |
|as any. And for Radney, though in his infancy he may have laid him down on the  |
|lone Nantucket beach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he     |
|had long followed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was  |
|he quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods seaman, fresh  |
|from the latitudes of buck-horn handled bowie-knives. Yet was this Nantucketer  |
|a man with some good-hearted traits; and this Lakeman, a mariner, who though    |
|a sort of devil indeed, might yet by inflexible firmness, only tempered by      |
|that common decency of human recognition which is the meanest slave's right;    |
|thus treated, this Steelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At     |
|all events, he had proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad,      |
|and Steelkilt--but, gentlemen, you shall hear. "It was not more than a day or   |
|two at the furthest after pointing her prow for her island haven, that the      |
|Town-Ho's leak seemed again increasing, but only so as to require an hour or    |
|more at the pumps every day. You must know that in a settled and civilized      |
|ocean like our Atlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping     |
|their whole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the officer  |
|of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the probability would    |
|be that he and his shipmates would never again remember it, on account of all   |
|hands gently subsiding to the bottom. Nor in the solitary and savage seas far   |
|from you to the westward, gentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep |
|clanging at their pump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable |
|length; that is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other  |
|reasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is in some  |
|very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless latitude, that   |
|her captain begins to feel a little anxious. "Much this way had it been with    |
|the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found gaining once more, there was in truth   |
|some small concern manifested by several of her company; especially by Radney   |
|the mate. He commanded the upper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew,   |
|and every way expanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little |
|of a coward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness     |
|touching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or on sea  |
|that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he betrayed this   |
|solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the seamen declared that it    |
|was only on account of his being a part owner in her. So when they were working |
|that evening at the pumps, there was on this head no small gamesomeness slily   |
|going on among them, as they stood with their feet continually overflowed by the|
|rippling clear water; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen--that bubbling    |
|from the pumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at   |
|the lee scupper-holes. "Now, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in     |
|this conventional world of ours--watery or otherwise; that when a person placed |
|in command over his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his   |
|superior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he conceives |
|an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a chance he will pull   |
|down and pulverize that subaltern's tower, and make a little heap of dust of it.|
|Be this conceit of mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall|
|and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the  |
|tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a   |
|heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had  |
|he been born son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a   |
|mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and   |
|Steelkilt knew it. "Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump |
|with the rest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with |
|his gay banterings. "'Aye, aye, my merry lads, it's a lively leak this; hold a  |
|cannikin, one of ye, and let's have a taste. By the Lord, it's worth bottling!  |
|I tell ye what, men, old Rad's investment must go for it! he had best cut       |
|away his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that sword-fish   |
|only began the job; he's come back again with a gang of ship-carpenters,        |
|saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole posse of 'em are now hard  |
|at work cutting and slashing at the bottom; making improvements, I suppose.     |
|If old Rad were here now, I'd tell him to jump overboard and scatter 'em.       |
|They're playing the devil with his estate, I can tell him. But he's a simple    |
|old soul,--Rad, and a beauty too. Boys, they say the rest of his property is    |
|invested in looking-glasses. I wonder if he'd give a poor devil like me the     |
|model of his nose.' "'Damn your eyes! what's that pump stopping for?' roared    |
|Radney, pretending not to have heard the sailors' talk. 'Thunder away at it!'   |
|'Aye, aye, sir,' said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys, lively,     |
|now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed    |
|their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard |
|which denotes the fullest tension of life's utmost energies. "Quitting the      |
|pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went forward all panting,  |
|and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot,   |
|and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was,     |
|gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally  |
|exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along   |
|the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and  |
|also a shovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a     |
|pig to run at large. "Now, gentlemen, sweeping a ship's deck at sea is a piece  |
|of household work which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended     |
|to every evening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually    |
|foundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of sea-usages and |
|the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom would not willingly    |
|drown without first washing their faces. But in all vessels this broom business |
|is the prescriptive province of the boys, if boys there be aboard. Besides, it  |
|was the stronger men in the Town-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking    |
|turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt   |
|had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should |
|have been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical     |
|duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars  |
|so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood between the two        |
|men. "But there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as    |
|plainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat in his   |
|face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will understand this; and     |
|all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman fully comprehended when the mate  |
|uttered his command. But as he sat still for a moment, and as he steadfastly    |
|looked into the mate's malignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks   |
|heaped up in him and the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as     |
|he instinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness to    |
|stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being--a repugnance     |
|most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when aggrieved--this    |
|nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over Steelkilt. "Therefore, in his   |
|ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily exhaustion he was temporarily |
|in, he answered him saying that sweeping the deck was not his business, and he  |
|would not do it. And then, without at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed    |
|to three lads as the customary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps,  |
|had done little or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a  |
|most domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his command; |
|meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an uplifted cooper's    |
|club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near by. "Heated and irritated as |
|he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of|
|forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate;|
|but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking     |
|he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney       |
|shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to   |
|do his bidding. "Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass,      |
|steadily followed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated   |
|his intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had not the    |
|slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with his twisted hand  |
|he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it was to no purpose. And     |
|in this way the two went once slowly round the windlass; when, resolved at      |
|last no longer to retreat, bethinking him that he had now forborne as much as   |
|comported with his humor, the Lakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to   |
|the officer: "'Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look  |
|to yourself.' But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where the  |
|Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of his teeth;    |
|meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions. Retreating not the   |
|thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard|
|of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching his right hand behind him and creepingly    |
|drawing it back, told his persecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek    |
|he (Steelkilt) would murder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for  |
|the slaughter by the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next   |
|instant the lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch   |
|spouting blood like a whale. "Ere the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one|
|of the backstays leading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing   |
|their mastheads. They were both Canallers. "'Canallers!' cried Don Pedro. 'We   |
|have seen many whale-ships in our harbours, but never heard of your Canallers.  |
|Pardon: who and what are they?' "'Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to  |
|our grand Erie Canal. You must have heard of it.' "'Nay, Senor; hereabouts in   |
|this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary land, we know but little of your     |
|vigorous North.' "'Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha's very       |
|fine; and ere proceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for     |
|such information may throw side-light upon my story.' "For three hundred and    |
|sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of the state of New York;    |
|through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; through long,      |
|dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for     |
|fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great   |
|forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy    |
|hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble       |
|Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires    |
|stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt  |
|and often lawless life. There's your true Ashantee, gentlemen; there howl your  |
|pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you; under the long-flung shadow,|
|and the snug patronising lee of churches. For by some curious fatality, as it   |
|is often noted of your metropolitan freebooters that they ever encamp around    |
|the halls of justice, so sinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities. |
|"'Is that a friar passing?' said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the crowded  |
|plazza, with humorous concern. "'Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella's  |
|Inquisition wanes in Lima,' laughed Don Sebastian. 'Proceed, Senor.' "'A moment!|
|Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all us Limeese, I but    |
|desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your  |
|delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt    |
|comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along   |
|this coast--"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more |
|plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open--and "Corrupt as Lima." So,   |
|too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St.    |
|Mark!--St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out|
|again.' "Freely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would make|
|a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is he. Like Mark   |
|Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery Nile, he indolently   |
|floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked Cleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh|
|upon the sunny deck. But ashore, all this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish  |
|guise which the Canaller so proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat |
|betoken his grand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages   |
|through which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not unshunned    |
|in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received good turns from    |
|one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would fain be not ungrateful;     |
|but it is often one of the prime redeeming qualities of your man of violence,   |
|that at times he has as stiff an arm to back a poor stranger in a strait, as to |
|plunder a wealthy one. In sum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life  |
|is, is emphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so    |
|many of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of mankind, except|
|Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling captains. Nor does it at all  |
|diminish the curiousness of this matter, that to many thousands of our rural    |
|boys and young men born along its line, the probationary life of the Grand Canal|
|furnishes the sole transition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field,|
|and recklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas. "'I see! I       |
|see!' impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha upon his silvery     |
|ruffles. 'No need to travel! The world's one Lima. I had thought, now, that at  |
|your temperate North the generations were cold and holy as the hills.--But the  |
|story.' "I left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly    |
|had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four   |
|harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like   |
|baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag    |
|their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with   |
|them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of       |
|harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with a whale-pike, calling   |
|upon his officers to manhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to |
|the quarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving border of the  |
|confusion, and prying into the heart of it with his pike, sought to prick out   |
|the object of his resentment. But Steelkilt and his desperadoes were too much   |
|for them all; they succeeded in gaining the forecastle deck, where, hastily     |
|slewing about three or four large casks in a line with the windlass, these      |
|sea-Parisians entrenched themselves behind the barricade. "'Come out of that, ye|
|pirates!' roared the captain, now menacing them with a pistol in each hand, just|
|brought to him by the steward. 'Come out of that, ye cut-throats!' "Steelkilt   |
|leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there, defied the worst the   |
|pistols could do; but gave the captain to understand distinctly, that his       |
|(Steelkilt's) death would be the signal for a murderous mutiny on the part of   |
|all hands. Fearing in his heart lest this might prove but too true, the captain |
|a little desisted, but still commanded the insurgents instantly to return to    |
|their duty. "'Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?' demanded their       |
|ringleader. "'Turn to! turn to!--I make no promise;--to your duty! Do you want  |
|to sink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!' and he once    |
|more raised a pistol. "'Sink the ship?' cried Steelkilt. 'Aye, let her sink.    |
|Not a man of us turns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. |
|What say ye, men?' turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their response.  |
|"The Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye on the  |
|Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:--'It's not our fault; we      |
|didn't want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was boy's business; he   |
|might have known me before this; I told him not to prick the buffalo; I believe |
|I have broken a finger here against his cursed jaw; ain't those mincing knives  |
|down in the forecastle there, men? look to those handspikes, my hearties.       |
|Captain, by God, look to yourself; say the word; don't be a fool; forget it all;|
|we are ready to turn to; treat us decently, and we're your men; but we won't    |
|be flogged.' "'Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!' "'Look ye, now,'   |
|cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him, 'there are a few of us here|
|(and I am one of them) who have shipped for the cruise, d'ye see; now as you    |
|well know, sir, we can claim our discharge as soon as the anchor is down; so we |
|don't want a row; it's not our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready  |
|to work, but we won't be flogged.' "'Turn to!' roared the Captain. "Steelkilt   |
|glanced round him a moment, and then said:--'I tell you what it is now, Captain,|
|rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby rascal, we won't lift a hand |
|against ye unless ye attack us; but till you say the word about not flogging    |
|us, we don't do a hand's turn.' "'Down into the forecastle then, down with      |
|ye, I'll keep ye there till ye're sick of it. Down ye go.' "'Shall we?' cried   |
|the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against it; but at length, in      |
|obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down into their dark den, growlingly  |
|disappearing, like bears into a cave. "As the Lakeman's bare head was just level|
|with the planks, the Captain and his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly    |
|drawing over the slide of the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and|
|loudly called for the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the |
|companionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered something  |
|down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them--ten in number--leaving |
|on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had remained neutral. "All night a    |
|wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and aft, especially about|
|the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at which last place it was feared the |
|insurgents might emerge, after breaking through the bulkhead below. But the     |
|hours of darkness passed in peace; the men who still remained at their duty     |
|toiling hard at the pumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals through     |
|the dreary night dismally resounded through the ship. "At sunrise the Captain   |
|went forward, and knocking on the deck, summoned the prisoners to work; but     |
|with a yell they refused. Water was then lowered down to them, and a couple of  |
|handfuls of biscuit were tossed after it; when again turning the key upon them  |
|and pocketing it, the Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for |
|three days this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling,   |
|and then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered; and     |
|suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were ready to       |
|turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet, united perhaps   |
|to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained them to surrender at     |
|discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain reiterated his demand to the rest,  |
|but Steelkilt shouted up to him a terrific hint to stop his babbling and betake |
|himself where he belonged. On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers   |
|bolted up into the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain    |
|them. Only three were left. "'Better turn to, now?' said the Captain with a     |
|heartless jeer. "'Shut us up again, will ye!' cried Steelkilt. "'Oh certainly,' |
|the Captain, and the key clicked. "It was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged|
|by the defection of seven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking    |
|voice that had last hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place  |
|as black as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to the   |
|two Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst out of their  |
|hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with their keen mincing   |
|knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a handle at each end) run amuck |
|from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if by any devilishness of desperation    |
|possible, seize the ship. For himself, he would do this, he said, whether they  |
|joined him or not. That was the last night he should spend in that den. But the |
|scheme met with no opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they     |
|were ready for that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but a    |
|surrender. And what was more, they each insisted upon being the first man on    |
|deck, when the time to make the rush should come. But to this their leader as   |
|fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself; particularly as his     |
|two comrades would not yield, the one to the other, in the matter; and both     |
|of them could not be first, for the ladder would but admit one man at a time.   |
|And here, gentlemen, the foul play of these miscreants must come out. "Upon     |
|hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own separate soul had  |
|suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece of treachery, namely: to   |
|be foremost in breaking out, in order to be the first of the three, though the  |
|last of the ten, to surrender; and thereby secure whatever small chance of      |
|pardon such conduct might merit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination|
|still to lead them to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of   |
|villany, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their leader  |
|fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in three sentences; |
|and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with cords; and shrieked out   |
|for the Captain at midnight. "Thinking murder at hand, and smelling in the      |
|dark for the blood, he and all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the   |
|forecastle. In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot,  |
|the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious    |
|allies, who at once claimed the honour of securing a man who had been fully     |
|ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along the deck like   |
|dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the mizzen rigging, like    |
|three quarters of meat, and there they hung till morning. 'Damn ye,' cried      |
|the Captain, pacing to and fro before them, 'the vultures would not touch ye,   |
|ye villains!' "At sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had   |
|rebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the former that|
|he had a good mind to flog them all round--thought, upon the whole, he would do |
|so--he ought to--justice demanded it; but for the present, considering their    |
|timely surrender, he would let them go with a reprimand, which he accordingly   |
|administered in the vernacular. "'But as for you, ye carrion rogues,' turning to|
|the three men in the rigging--'for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;'|
|and, seizing a rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two   |
|traitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads sideways,   |
|as the two crucified thieves are drawn. "'My wrist is sprained with ye!' he     |
|cried, at last; 'but there is still rope enough left for you, my fine bantam,   |
|that wouldn't give up. Take that gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can|
|say for himself.' "For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion  |
|of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort |
|of hiss, 'What I say is this--and mind it well--if you flog me, I murder you!'  |
|"'Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me'--and the Captain drew off with the    |
|rope to strike. "'Best not,' hissed the Lakeman. "'But I must,'--and the rope   |
|was once more drawn back for the stroke. "Steelkilt here hissed out something,  |
|inaudible to all but the Captain; who, to the amazement of all hands, started   |
|back, paced the deck rapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down|
|his rope, said, 'I won't do it--let him go--cut him down: d'ye hear?' But as the|
|junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale man, with a bandaged    |
|head, arrested them--Radney the chief mate. Ever since the blow, he had lain in |
|his berth; but that morning, hearing the tumult on the deck, he had crept out,  |
|and thus far had watched the whole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that |
|he could hardly speak; but mumbling something about his being willing and able  |
|to do what the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced to  |
|his pinioned foe. "'You are a coward!' hissed the Lakeman. "'So I am, but take  |
|that.' The mate was in the very act of striking, when another hiss stayed his   |
|uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing no more, made good his word, spite    |
|of Steelkilt's threat, whatever that might have been. The three men were then   |
|cut down, all hands were turned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen,   |
|the iron pumps clanged as before. "Just after dark that day, when one watch     |
|had retired below, a clamor was heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling  |
|traitors running up, besieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort     |
|with the crew. Entreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at    |
|their own instance they were put down in the ship's run for salvation. Still,   |
|no sign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed, that   |
|mainly at Steelkilt's instigation, they had resolved to maintain the strictest  |
|peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the ship reached port,     |
|desert her in a body. But in order to insure the speediest end to the voyage,   |
|they all agreed to another thing--namely, not to sing out for whales, in case   |
|any should be discovered. For, spite of her leak, and spite of all her other    |
|perils, the Town-Ho still maintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as|
|willing to lower for a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck   |
|the cruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his berth |
|for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the vital jaw of   |
|the whale. "But though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of |
|passiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till all was    |
|over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the man who had stung  |
|him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney the chief mate's watch;    |
|and as if the infatuated man sought to run more than half way to meet his doom, |
|after the scene at the rigging, he insisted, against the express counsel of the |
|captain, upon resuming the head of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two|
|other circumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.    |
|"During the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the bulwarks of |
|the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of the boat which was    |
|hoisted up there, a little above the ship's side. In this attitude, it was well |
|known, he sometimes dozed. There was a considerable vacancy between the boat    |
|and the ship, and down between this was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, |
|and found that his next trick at the helm would come round at two o'clock, in   |
|the morning of the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his    |
|leisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully in his   |
|watches below. "'What are you making there?' said a shipmate. "'What do you     |
|think? what does it look like?' "'Like a lanyard for your bag; but it's an odd  |
|one, seems to me.' 'Yes, rather oddish,' said the Lakeman, holding it at arm's  |
|length before him; 'but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven't enough      |
|twine,--have you any?' "But there was none in the forecastle. "'Then I must get |
|some from old Rad;' and he rose to go aft. "'You don't mean to go a begging     |
|to HIM!' said a sailor. "'Why not? Do you think he won't do me a turn, when     |
|it's to help himself in the end, shipmate?' and going to the mate, he looked    |
|at him quietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given  |
|him--neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an iron ball,|
|closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the Lakeman's monkey jacket, as|
|he was tucking the coat into his hammock for a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, |
|his trick at the silent helm--nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave|
|always ready dug to the seaman's hand--that fatal hour was then to come; and in |
|the fore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and stretched  |
|as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in. "But, gentlemen, a fool saved the    |
|would-be murderer from the bloody deed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he  |
|had, and without being the avenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself |
|seemed to step in to take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he    |
|would have done. "It was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of    |
|the second day, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe  |
|man, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, 'There she      |
|rolls! there she rolls!' Jesu, what a whale! It was Moby Dick. "'Moby Dick!'    |
|cried Don Sebastian; 'St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do whales have christenings? |
|Whom call you Moby Dick?' "'A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal  |
|monster, Don;--but that would be too long a story.' "'How? how?' cried all the  |
|young Spaniards, crowding. "'Nay, Dons, Dons--nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that  |
|now. Let me get more into the air, Sirs.' "'The chicha! the chicha!' cried Don  |
|Pedro; 'our vigorous friend looks faint;--fill up his empty glass!' "No need,   |
|gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.--Now, gentlemen, so suddenly perceiving   |
|the snowy whale within fifty yards of the ship--forgetful of the compact among  |
|the crew--in the excitement of the moment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively  |
|and involuntarily lifted his voice for the monster, though for some little      |
|time past it had been plainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was  |
|now a phrensy. 'The White Whale--the White Whale!' was the cry from captain,    |
|mates, and harpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious    |
|to capture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed askance,   |
|and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass, that lit up by    |
|a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a living opal in the     |
|blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality pervades the whole career of    |
|these events, as if verily mapped out before the world itself was charted.      |
|The mutineer was the bowsman of the mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his   |
|duty to sit next him, while Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and     |
|haul in or slacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four    |
|boats were lowered, the mate's got the start; and none howled more fiercely     |
|with delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a stiff pull, |
|their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney sprang to the bow. He was |
|always a furious man, it seems, in a boat. And now his bandaged cry was, to     |
|beach him on the whale's topmost back. Nothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up |
|and up, through a blinding foam that blent two whitenesses together; till of    |
|a sudden the boat struck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled   |
|out the standing mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale's slippery back,   |
|the boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was tossed    |
|over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck out through the   |
|spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that veil, wildly seeking    |
|to remove himself from the eye of Moby Dick. But the whale rushed round in a    |
|sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer between his jaws; and rearing high up with |
|him, plunged headlong again, and went down. "Meantime, at the first tap of the  |
|boat's bottom, the Lakeman had slackened the line, so as to drop astern from    |
|the whirlpool; calmly looking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden,    |
|terrific, downward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line.  |
|He cut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Moby Dick rose again, |
|with some tatters of Radney's red woollen shirt, caught in the teeth that had   |
|destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the whale eluded them, and  |
|finally wholly disappeared. "In good time, the Town-Ho reached her port--a      |
|savage, solitary place--where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by   |
|the Lakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among |
|the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double war-canoe of    |
|the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor. "The ship's company being  |
|reduced to but a handful, the captain called upon the Islanders to assist him   |
|in the laborious business of heaving down the ship to stop the leak. But to     |
|such unresting vigilance over their dangerous allies was this small band of     |
|whites necessitated, both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work |
|they underwent, that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in    |
|such a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so    |
|heavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the ship    |
|as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon from the bows;  |
|stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the Islanders not to approach the  |
|ship at their peril, took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best    |
|whale-boat, steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles     |
|distant, to procure a reinforcement to his crew. "On the fourth day of the      |
|sail, a large canoe was descried, which seemed to have touched at a low isle    |
|of corals. He steered away from it; but the savage craft bore down on him; and  |
|soon the voice of Steelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under   |
|water. The captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked  |
|war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol   |
|so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam. "'What   |
|do you want of me?' cried the captain. "'Where are you bound? and for what are  |
|you bound?' demanded Steelkilt; 'no lies.' "'I am bound to Tahiti for more men.'|
|"'Very good. Let me board you a moment--I come in peace.' With that he leaped   |
|from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale, stood face to face  |
|with the captain. "'Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat     |
|after me. As soon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder  |
|island, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightning strike me!' "'A   |
|pretty scholar,' laughed the Lakeman. 'Adios, Senor!' and leaping into the sea, |
|he swam back to his comrades. "Watching the boat till it was fairly beached,    |
|and drawn up to the roots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again,    |
|and in due time arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck    |
|befriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were providentially|
|in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor headed. They embarked; |
|and so for ever got the start of their former captain, had he been at all minded|
|to work them legal retribution. "Some ten days after the French ships sailed,   |
|the whale-boat arrived, and the captain was forced to enlist some of the more   |
|civilized Tahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small  |
|native schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all right     |
|there, again resumed his cruisings. "Where Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none    |
|know; but upon the island of Nantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the  |
|sea which refuses to give up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white     |
|whale that destroyed him. "'Are you through?' said Don Sebastian, quietly. "'I  |
|am, Don.' "'Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions, |
|this your story is in substance really true? It is so passing wonderful! Did    |
|you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me if I seem to press.'     |
|"'Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don Sebastian's      |
|suit,' cried the company, with exceeding interest. "'Is there a copy of the     |
|Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn, gentlemen?' "'Nay,' said Don Sebastian;     |
|'but I know a worthy priest near by, who will quickly procure one for me. I go  |
|for it; but are you well advised? this may grow too serious.' "'Will you be so  |
|good as to bring the priest also, Don?' "'Though there are no Auto-da-Fe's in   |
|Lima now,' said one of the company to another; 'I fear our sailor friend runs   |
|risk of the archiepiscopacy. Let us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no|
|need of this.' "'Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also |
|beg that you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists you  |
|can.' 'This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,' said Don Sebastian,  |
|gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure. "'Let me remove my hat. Now,  |
|venerable priest, further into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that |
|I may touch it. "'So help me Heaven, and on my honour the story I have told ye, |
|gentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be true; it  |
|happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I have seen and talked |
|with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.'" I shall ere long paint to you as    |
|well as one can without canvas, something like the true form of the whale as he |
|actually appears to the eye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the   |
|whale is moored alongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon  |
|there. It may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious  |
|imaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day confidently       |
|challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the world right in this  |
|matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all wrong. It may be that the     |
|primal source of all those pictorial delusions will be found among the oldest   |
|Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For ever since those inventive but    |
|unscrupulous times when on the marble panellings of temples, the pedestals of   |
|statues, and on shields, medallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in  |
|scales of chain-armor like Saladin's, and a helmeted head like St. George's;    |
|ever since then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not only   |
|in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific presentations     |
|of him. Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting   |
|to be the whale's, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta,     |
|in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of that   |
|immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation     |
|of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being. No    |
|wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have      |
|been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate   |
|department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of      |
|leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is    |
|half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that    |
|small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an   |
|anaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale's majestic flukes. But go to   |
|the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian painter's portrait of this |
|fish; for he succeeds no better than the antediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido's     |
|picture of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where      |
|did Guido get the model of such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth,   |
|in painting the same scene in his own "Perseus Descending," make out one whit   |
|better. The huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the surface,|
|scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on its back, and    |
|its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken   |
|for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower. Then,   |
|there are the Prodromus whales of old Scotch Sibbald, and Jonah's whale, as     |
|depicted in the prints of old Bibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall    |
|be said of these? As for the book-binder's whale winding like a vine-stalk      |
|round the stock of a descending anchor--as stamped and gilded on the backs      |
|and title-pages of many books both old and new--that is a very picturesque      |
|but purely fabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on     |
|antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless call    |
|this book-binder's fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so intended       |
|when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an old Italian       |
|publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the Revival of Learning;     |
|and in those days, and even down to a comparatively late period, dolphins were  |
|popularly supposed to be a species of the Leviathan. In the vignettes and other |
|embellishments of some ancient books you will at times meet with very curious   |
|touches at the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and   |
|cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain.    |
|In the title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning" you  |
|will find some curious whales. But quitting all these unprofessional attempts,  |
|let us glance at those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific |
|delineations, by those who know. In old Harris's collection of voyages there    |
|are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671,    |
|entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale,       |
|Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one of those plates the whales, like   |
|great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears    |
|running over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is    |
|made of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes. Then again, there     |
|is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the    |
|English navy, entitled "A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for       |
|the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries." In this book is an    |
|outline purporting to be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn    |
|by scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on   |
|deck." I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit |
|of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an    |
|eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm   |
|whale, would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah,   |
|my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye! Nor   |
|are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the benefit of   |
|the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that   |
|popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature." In the abridged London edition of   |
|1807, there are plates of an alleged "whale" and a "narwhale." I do not wish    |
|to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow;   |
|and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in     |
|this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any  |
|intelligent public of schoolboys. Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count  |
|de Lacepede, a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book,  |
|wherein are several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All     |
|these are not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland    |
|whale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long experienced      |
|man as touching that species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.   |
|But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was reserved   |
|for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron. In 1836,      |
|he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls a     |
|picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer, you |
|had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick  |
|Cuvier's Sperm Whale is not a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had|
|the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived   |
|that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor in  |
|the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that is, from    |
|a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencil those Chinese   |
|are, many queer cups and saucers inform us. As for the sign-painters' whales    |
|seen in the streets hanging over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said   |
|of them? They are generally Richard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very |
|savage; breakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full     |
|of mariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.     |
|But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very surprising   |
|after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken from the   |
|stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked ship,   |
|with broken back, would correctly represent the noble animal itself in all      |
|its undashed pride of hull and spars. Though elephants have stood for their     |
|full-lengths, the living Leviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his |
|portrait. The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to    |
|be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out   |
|of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is    |
|a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air,   |
|so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations. And, not to speak of   |
|the highly presumable difference of contour between a young sucking whale and   |
|a full-grown Platonian Leviathan; yet, even in the case of one of those young   |
|sucking whales hoisted to a ship's deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, |
|limbered, varying shape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself   |
|could not catch. But it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the     |
|stranded whale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at    |
|all. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan, that his    |
|skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though Jeremy Bentham's   |
|skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of his executors,    |
|correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed utilitarian old gentleman, with    |
|all Jeremy's other leading personal characteristics; yet nothing of this kind   |
|could be inferred from any leviathan's articulated bones. In fact, as the great |
|Hunter says, the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the      |
|fully invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so    |
|roundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head, as |
|in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is also very curiously |
|displayed in the side fin, the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones|
|of the human hand, minus only the thumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers,|
|the index, middle, ring, and little finger. But all these are permanently lodged|
|in their fleshy covering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering.       |
|"However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us," said humorous Stubb one  |
|day, "he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens." For all these   |
|reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs conclude that the     |
|great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted   |
|to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another,      |
|but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there    |
|is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like.    |
|And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living   |
|contour, is by going a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small      |
|risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you    |
|had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan. In    |
|connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly tempted here to  |
|enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found in  |
|certain books, both ancient and modern, especially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, |
|Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass that matter by. I know of only four published   |
|outlines of the great Sperm Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's,    |
|and Beale's. In the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to.  |
|Huggins's is far better than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale's is the best.   |
|All Beale's drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in the |
|picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter. His   |
|frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt calculated to excite|
|the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is admirably correct and life-like     |
|in its general effect. Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are   |
|pretty correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his    |
|fault though. Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby;    |
|but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He    |
|has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency, because it |
|is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you can derive anything   |
|like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by his living hunters. But,    |
|taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details not the most    |
|correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be anywhere found, are   |
|two large French engravings, well executed, and taken from paintings by one     |
|Garnery. Respectively, they represent attacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In  |
|the first engraving a noble Sperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might,   |
|just risen beneath the boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing     |
|high in the air upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The      |
|prow of the boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the    |
|monster's spine; and standing in that prow, for that one single incomputable    |
|flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the incensed boiling     |
|spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping, as if from a precipice. The      |
|action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and true. The half-emptied        |
|line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the wooden poles of the spilled harpoons   |
|obliquely bob in it; the heads of the swimming crew are scattered about the     |
|whale in contrasting expressions of affright; while in the black stormy distance|
|the ship is bearing down upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the  |
|anatomical details of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, |
|I could not draw so good a one. In the second engraving, the boat is in the     |
|act of drawing alongside the barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale,    |
|that rolls his black weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the  |
|Patagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so that from  |
|so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave      |
|supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small    |
|crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale   |
|sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped     |
|leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in|
|his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught |
|nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all raging  |
|commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the glassy level of   |
|a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the powerless ship, and the    |
|inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered fortress, with the flag of capture      |
|lazily hanging from the whale-pole inserted into his spout-hole. Who Garnery the|
|painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he was either practically    |
|conversant with his subject, or else marvellously tutored by some experienced   |
|whaleman. The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all     |
|the paintings of Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and   |
|breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where   |
|the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles   |
|of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the      |
|successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? |
|Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of  |
|Garnery. The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of  |
|things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they     |
|have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's experience in     |
|the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have    |
|nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all      |
|capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt. For the most part, the  |
|English and American whale draughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting    |
|the mechanical outline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale;      |
|which, so far as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to |
|sketching the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned Right    |
|whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland whale, and three |
|or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and porpoises, treats us to a series   |
|of classical engravings of boat hooks, chopping knives, and grapnels; and with  |
|the microscopic diligence of a Leuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a       |
|shivering world ninety-six fac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean|
|no disparagement to the excellent voyager (I honour him for a veteran), but in  |
|so important a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured for    |
|every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of the Peace.  |
|In addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other French   |
|engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself "H. Durand." One  |
|of them, though not precisely adapted to our present purpose, nevertheless      |
|deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet noon-scene among the isles of |
|the Pacific; a French whaler anchored, inshore, in a calm, and lazily taking    |
|water on board; the loosened sails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms|
|in the background, both drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is  |
|very fine, when considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen |
|under one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving is quite |
|a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in the very heart   |
|of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside; the vessel (in the act   |
|of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to a quay; and a boat, hurriedly  |
|pushing off from this scene of activity, is about giving chase to whales in the |
|distance. The harpoons and lances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just  |
|setting the mast in its hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little   |
|craft stands half-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship,  |
|the smoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke over  |
|a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up with earnest   |
|of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the excited seamen. On   |
|Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a crippled    |
|beggar (or KEDGER, as the sailors say) holding a painted board before him,      |
|representing the tragic scene in which he lost his leg. There are three whales  |
|and three boats; and one of the boats (presumed to contain the missing leg in   |
|all its original integrity) is being crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale.|
|Any time these ten years, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and  |
|exhibited that stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification |
|has now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in     |
|Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a stump as any you will   |
|find in the western clearings. But, though for ever mounted on that stump, never|
|a stump-speech does the poor whaleman make; but, with downcast eyes, stands     |
|ruefully contemplating his own amputation. Throughout the Pacific, and also in  |
|Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches|
|of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm       |
|Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other    |
|like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious  |
|contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of|
|ocean leisure. Some of them have little boxes of dentistical-looking implements,|
|specially intended for the skrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil |
|with their jack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the      |
|sailor, they will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner's   |
|fancy. Long exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man   |
|to that condition in which God placed him, i.e. what is called savagery. Your   |
|true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I myself am a savage,     |
|owning no allegiance but to the King of the Cannibals; and ready at any moment  |
|to rebel against him. Now, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in |
|his domestic hours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian  |
|war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving,  |
|is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a  |
|bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden |
|net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years of steady application. |
|As with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the same     |
|marvellous patience, and with the same single shark's tooth, of his one poor    |
|jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not quite as workmanlike,|
|but as close packed in its maziness of design, as the Greek savage, Achilles's  |
|shield; and full of barbaric spirit and suggestiveness, as the prints of that   |
|fine old Dutch savage, Albert Durer. Wooden whales, or whales cut in profile    |
|out of the small dark slabs of the noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met |
|with in the forecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much    |
|accuracy. At some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales     |
|hung by the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is sleepy, |
|the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales are seldom      |
|remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some old-fashioned churches     |
|you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for weather-cocks; but they are     |
|so elevated, and besides that are to all intents and purposes so labelled       |
|with "HANDS OFF!" you cannot examine them closely enough to decide upon their   |
|merit. In bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken    |
|cliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain, you     |
|will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the Leviathan partly    |
|merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against them in a surf of green    |
|surges. Then, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is continually|
|girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from some lucky point of view|
|you will catch passing glimpses of the profiles of whales defined along the     |
|undulating ridges. But you must be a thorough whaleman, to see these sights;    |
|and not only that, but if you wish to return to such a sight again, you must    |
|be sure and take the exact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first    |
|stand-point, else so chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your  |
|precise, previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery; like the  |
|Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita, though once high-ruffed Mendanna  |
|trod them and old Figuera chronicled them. Nor when expandingly lifted by your  |
|subject, can you fail to trace out great whales in the starry heavens, and      |
|boats in pursuit of them; as when long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern  |
|nations saw armies locked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I  |
|chased Leviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright    |
|points that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent Antarctic skies  |
|I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase against the starry Cetus    |
|far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and the Flying Fish. With a frigate's   |
|anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for spurs, would I could     |
|mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to see whether the fabled heavens  |
|with all their countless tents really lie encamped beyond my mortal sight!      |
|Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows of      |
|brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely feeds.   |
|For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that we seemed to be sailing  |
|through boundless fields of ripe and golden wheat. On the second day, numbers   |
|of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from the attack of a Sperm Whaler like   |
|the Pequod, with open jaws sluggishly swam through the brit, which, adhering to |
|the fringing fibres of that wondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that|
|manner separated from the water that escaped at the lip. As morning mowers, who |
|side by side slowly and seethingly advance their scythes through the long wet   |
|grass of marshy meads; even so these monsters swam, making a strange, grassy,   |
|cutting sound; and leaving behind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow   |
|sea. That part of the sea known among whalemen as the "Brazil Banks" does not   |
|bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there being shallows |
|and soundings there, but because of this remarkable meadow-like appearance,     |
|caused by the vast drifts of brit continually floating in those latitudes, where|
|the Right Whale is often chased. But it was only the sound they made as they    |
|parted the brit which at all reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads,  |
|especially when they paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black   |
|forms looked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in    |
|the great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will sometimes |
|pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them to be such, taking  |
|them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil; even so, often, with him, who  |
|for the first time beholds this species of the leviathans of the sea. And even  |
|when recognised at last, their immense magnitude renders it very hard really    |
|to believe that such bulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in    |
|all parts, with the same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse. Indeed,   |
|in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the deep with the     |
|same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though some old naturalists   |
|have maintained that all creatures of the land are of their kind in the sea;    |
|and though taking a broad general view of the thing, this may very well be;     |
|yet coming to specialties, where, for example, does the ocean furnish any fish  |
|that in disposition answers to the sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed  |
|shark alone can in any generic respect be said to bear comparative analogy to   |
|him. But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have|
|ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we  |
|know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over |
|numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though,  |
|by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and   |
|indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone |
|upon the waters; though but a moment's consideration will teach, that however   |
|baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering   |
|future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the   |
|crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest,|
|stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these|
|very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which|
|aboriginally belongs to it. The first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that|
|with Portuguese vengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as  |
|a widow. That same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships |
|of last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds|
|of the fair world it yet covers. Wherein differ the sea and the land, that a    |
|miracle upon one is not a miracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested  |
|upon the Hebrews, when under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground  |
|opened and swallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in   |
|precisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews. But not only|
|is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it is also a fiend to   |
|its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who murdered his own guests;    |
|sparing not the creatures which itself hath spawned. Like a savage tigress      |
|that tossing in the jungle overlays her own cubs, so the sea dashes even the    |
|mightiest whales against the rocks, and leaves them there side by side with the |
|split wrecks of ships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and  |
|snorting like a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean  |
|overruns the globe. Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded    |
|creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously    |
|hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish         |
|brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty     |
|embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal |
|cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on   |
|eternal war since the world began. Consider all this; and then turn to this     |
|green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; |
|and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this     |
|appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies    |
|one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors   |
|of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst  |
|never return! Slowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Pequod still held  |
|on her way north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling    |
|her keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering masts     |
|mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a plain. And still, |
|at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely, alluring jet would be seen. |
|But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural spread  |
|over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when the long burnished|
|sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across them, enjoining      |
|some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran    |
|on; in this profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by   |
|Daggoo from the main-mast-head. In the distance, a great white mass lazily      |
|rose, and rising higher and higher, and disentangling itself from the azure,    |
|at last gleamed before our prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills.     |
|Thus glistening for a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more   |
|arose, and silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Moby Dick?  |
|thought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once more,     |
|with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod, the negro yelled |
|out--"There! there again! there she breaches! right ahead! The White Whale, the |
|White Whale!" Upon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time|
|the bees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Ahab stood on the   |
|bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave his orders   |
|to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction indicated aloft by the  |
|outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo. Whether the flitting attendance of the   |
|one still and solitary jet had gradually worked upon Ahab, so that he was now   |
|prepared to connect the ideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the|
|particular whale he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed|
|him; whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly perceive the |
|white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave orders for lowering.  |
|The four boats were soon on the water; Ahab's in advance, and all swiftly       |
|pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with oars suspended,  |
|we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot where it sank, once     |
|more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby      |
|Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have   |
|hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth,|
|of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms    |
|radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas,   |
|as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face |
|or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct;     |
|but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like         |
|apparition of life. As with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again,    |
|Starbuck still gazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild     |
|voice exclaimed--"Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to    |
|have seen thee, thou white ghost!" "What was it, Sir?" said Flask. "The great   |
|live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their |
|ports to tell of it." But Ahab said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back   |
|to the vessel; the rest as silently following. Whatever superstitions the sperm |
|whalemen in general have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is,|
|that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to   |
|invest it with portentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all  |
|of them declare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few  |
|of them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true nature and form;  |
|notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the sperm whale his only food.   |
|For though other species of whales find their food above water, and may be seen |
|by man in the act of feeding, the spermaceti whale obtains his whole food in    |
|unknown zones below the surface; and only by inference is it that any one can   |
|tell of what, precisely, that food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he |
|will disgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some of   |
|them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They fancy that |
|the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings by them to the bed   |
|of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other species, is supplied with  |
|teeth in order to attack and tear it. There seems some ground to imagine that   |
|the great Kraken of Bishop Pontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid.|
|The manner in which the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, |
|with some other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But    |
|much abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he assigns it.  |
|By some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious creature,   |
|here spoken of, it is included among the class of cuttle-fish, to which, indeed,|
|in certain external respects it would seem to belong, but only as the Anak of   |
|the tribe. With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well |
|as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I    |
|have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line. The line      |
|originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapoured with     |
|tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar,  |
|as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also     |
|renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use;      |
|yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line       |
|for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are     |
|beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or |
|strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss. Of late years the  |
|Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a   |
|material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger,   |
|and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in  |
|all things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp    |
|is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired    |
|Circassian to behold. The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness.|
|At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment |
|its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty    |
|pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In|
|length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms.|
|Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like   |
|the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass|
|of densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of concentric spiralizations, without    |
|any hollow but the "heart," or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the   |
|cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out,       |
|infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution  |
|is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an |
|entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving  |
|it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to    |
|free it from all possible wrinkles and twists. In the English boats two tubs    |
|are used instead of one; the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs.  |
|There is some advantage in this; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit|
|more readily into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American |
|tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather   |
|bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in thickness;      |
|for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a     |
|considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When  |
|the painted canvas cover is clapped on the American line-tub, the boat looks    |
|as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to    |
|the whales. Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an  |
|eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub, and   |
|hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement   |
|of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate    |
|the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the  |
|stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line |
|originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course     |
|is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other;       |
|though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This |
|arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower end   |
|of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the |
|line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does,    |
|he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down   |
|after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would  |
|ever find her again. Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of   |
|the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is  |
|again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the |
|loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; |
|and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite       |
|gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the    |
|boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from |
|slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and   |
|is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called    |
|box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the    |
|gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp--the |
|rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that      |
|connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to     |
|detail. Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,      |
|twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are  |
|involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, |
|they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning   |
|their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself  |
|amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar,       |
|bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all      |
|these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be  |
|thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones    |
|to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit--strange thing! what cannot     |
|habit accomplish?--Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter  |
|repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the      |
|half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses;    |
|and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing  |
|the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you   |
|may say. Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those |
|repeated whaling disasters--some few of which are casually chronicled--of this  |
|man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when    |
|the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated    |
|in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when     |
|every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you   |
|cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking |
|like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest |
|warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness     |
|of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away    |
|with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out. Again: as     |
|the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm,   |
|is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the   |
|wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly  |
|harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so      |
|the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen   |
|before being brought into actual play--this is a thing which carries more of    |
|true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more?   |
|All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their    |
|necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that      |
|mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be  |
|a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one |
|whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker,  |
|and not a harpoon, by your side. If to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was |
|a thing of portents, to Queequeg it was quite a different object. "When you     |
|see him 'quid," said the savage, honing his harpoon in the bow of his hoisted   |
|boat, "then you quick see him 'parm whale." The next day was exceedingly still  |
|and sultry, and with nothing special to engage them, the Pequod's crew could    |
|hardly resist the spell of sleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of |
|the Indian Ocean through which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call  |
|a lively ground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins,     |
|flying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than those   |
|off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru. It was my turn to     |
|stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders leaning against the slackened |
|royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed in what seemed an enchanted air. No     |
|resolution could withstand it; in that dreamy mood losing all consciousness,    |
|at last my soul went out of my body; though my body still continued to sway as  |
|a pendulum will, long after the power which first moved it is withdrawn. Ere    |
|forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the seamen at the     |
|main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that at last all three of    |
|us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every swing that we made there was  |
|a nod from below from the slumbering helmsman. The waves, too, nodded their     |
|indolent crests; and across the wide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and|
|the sun over all. Suddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like |
|vices my hands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved   |
|me; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not forty    |
|fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like the capsized  |
|hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue, glistening in   |
|the sun's rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating in the trough of the sea,   |
|and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his vapoury jet, the whale looked like a  |
|portly burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, |
|was thy last. As if struck by some enchanter's wand, the sleepy ship and every  |
|sleeper in it all at once started into wakefulness; and more than a score of    |
|voices from all parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from   |
|aloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and regularly |
|spouted the sparkling brine into the air. "Clear away the boats! Luff!" cried   |
|Ahab. And obeying his own order, he dashed the helm down before the helmsman    |
|could handle the spokes. The sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed  |
|the whale; and ere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to   |
|the leeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples     |
|as he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed, Ahab gave   |
|orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak but in whispers.   |
|So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the boats, we swiftly but     |
|silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of the noiseless sails being set.|
|Presently, as we thus glided in chase, the monster perpendicularly flitted his  |
|tail forty feet into the air, and then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed |
|up. "There go flukes!" was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by     |
|Stubb's producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite was        |
|granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the whale rose    |
|again, and being now in advance of the smoker's boat, and much nearer to it     |
|than to any of the others, Stubb counted upon the honour of the capture. It was |
|obvious, now, that the whale had at length become aware of his pursuers. All    |
|silence of cautiousness was therefore no longer of use. Paddles were dropped,   |
|and oars came loudly into play. And still puffing at his pipe, Stubb cheered    |
|on his crew to the assault. Yes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All    |
|alive to his jeopardy, he was going "head out"; that part obliquely projecting  |
|from the mad yeast which he brewed. It will be seen in some other place of what |
|a very light substance the entire interior of the sperm whale's enormous head   |
|consists. Though apparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part|
|about him. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does     |
|so when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the upper    |
|part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the |
|lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to     |
|transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New   |
|York pilot-boat. "Start her, start her, my men! Don't hurry yourselves; take    |
|plenty of time--but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that's all," cried |
|Stubb, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. "Start her, now; give 'em the long|
|and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy--start her, all; but keep  |
|cool, keep cool--cucumbers is the word--easy, easy--only start her like grim    |
|death and grinning devils, and raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their |
|graves, boys--that's all. Start her!" "Woo-hoo! Wa-hee!" screamed the Gay-Header|
|in reply, raising some old war-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the      |
|strained boat involuntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading     |
|stroke which the eager Indian gave. But his wild screams were answered by       |
|others quite as wild. "Kee-hee! Kee-hee!" yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and |
|backwards on his seat, like a pacing tiger in his cage. "Ka-la! Koo-loo!" howled|
|Queequeg, as if smacking his lips over a mouthful of Grenadier's steak. And     |
|thus with oars and yells the keels cut the sea. Meanwhile, Stubb retaining his  |
|place in the van, still encouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing  |
|the smoke from his mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till  |
|the welcome cry was heard--"Stand up, Tashtego!--give it to him!" The harpoon   |
|was hurled. "Stern all!" The oarsmen backed water; the same moment something    |
|went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was the magical line.  |
|An instant before, Stubb had swiftly caught two additional turns with it round  |
|the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its increased rapid circlings, a hempen    |
|blue smoke now jetted up and mingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As    |
|the line passed round and round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching   |
|that point, it blisteringly passed through and through both of Stubb's hands,   |
|from which the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at these|
|times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy's sharp two-edged |
|sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time striving to wrest it out of     |
|your clutch. "Wet the line! wet the line!" cried Stubb to the tub oarsman (him  |
|seated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into it.* More  |
|turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place. The boat now flew   |
|through the boiling water like a shark all fins. Stubb and Tashtego here changed|
|places--stem for stern--a staggering business truly in that rocking commotion.  |
|Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be stated, that,  |
|in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the running line with water;   |
|in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or bailer, is set apart for that purpose. |
|Your hat, however, is the most convenient. From the vibrating line extending    |
|the entire length of the upper part of the boat, and from its now being more    |
|tight than a harpstring, you would have thought the craft had two keels--one    |
|cleaving the water, the other the air--as the boat churned on through both      |
|opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless  |
|whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but   |
|of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic     |
|gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging   |
|to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego |
|at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to bring down his centre  |
|of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics seemed passed as they shot on their    |
|way, till at length the whale somewhat slackened his flight. "Haul in--haul     |
|in!" cried Stubb to the bowsman! and, facing round towards the whale, all hands |
|began pulling the boat up to him, while yet the boat was being towed on. Soon   |
|ranging up by his flank, Stubb, firmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat,   |
|darted dart after dart into the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat   |
|alternately sterning out of the way of the whale's horrible wallow, and then    |
|ranging up for another fling. The red tide now poured from all sides of the     |
|monster like brooks down a hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in  |
|blood, which bubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting|
|sun playing upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection into    |
|every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men. And all the     |
|while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot from the spiracle of   |
|the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the mouth of the excited headsman; |
|as at every dart, hauling in upon his crooked lance (by the line attached to    |
|it), Stubb straightened it again and again, by a few rapid blows against the    |
|gunwale, then again and again sent it into the whale. "Pull up--pull up!" he    |
|now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale relaxed in his wrath. "Pull       |
|up!--close to!" and the boat ranged along the fish's flank. When reaching far   |
|over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept |
|it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel     |
|after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was     |
|fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was |
|the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his    |
|trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster horribly    |
|wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, |
|so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to|
|struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day. And now|
|abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from   |
|side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp,|
|cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore,  |
|as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and  |
|falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His   |
|heart had burst! "He's dead, Mr. Stubb," said Daggoo. "Yes; both pipes smoked   |
|out!" and withdrawing his own from his mouth, Stubb scattered the dead ashes    |
|over the water; and, for a moment, stood thoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse    |
|he had made. A word concerning an incident in the last chapter. According to    |
|the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes off from the ship,   |
|with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary steersman, and the harpooneer or |
|whale-fastener pulling the foremost oar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar.   |
|Now it needs a strong, nervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for  |
|often, in what is called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to    |
|the distance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting the |
|chase, the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the uttermost;   |
|indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman activity to the rest, not|
|only by incredible rowing, but by repeated loud and intrepid exclamations; and  |
|what it is to keep shouting at the top of one's compass, while all the other    |
|muscles are strained and half started--what that is none know but those who     |
|have tried it. For one, I cannot bawl very heartily and work very recklessly at |
|one and the same time. In this straining, bawling state, then, with his back to |
|the fish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting cry--"Stand   |
|up, and give it to him!" He now has to drop and secure his oar, turn round on   |
|his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little    |
|strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale. No wonder,   |
|taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances    |
|for a dart, not five are successful; no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers |
|are madly cursed and disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their |
|blood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are absent four   |
|years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship owners, whaling is but     |
|a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer that makes the voyage, and if you    |
|take the breath out of his body how can you expect to find it there when most   |
|wanted! Again, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant,  |
|that is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer likewise   |
|start to running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of themselves and every |
|one else. It is then they change places; and the headsman, the chief officer of |
|the little craft, takes his proper station in the bows of the boat. Now, I care |
|not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both foolish and unnecessary.   |
|The headsman should stay in the bows from first to last; he should both dart    |
|the harpoon and the lance, and no rowing whatever should be expected of him,    |
|except under circumstances obvious to any fisherman. I know that this would     |
|sometimes involve a slight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in   |
|various whalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast      |
|majority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so much the   |
|speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the harpooneer that    |
|has caused them. To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers |
|of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out   |
|of toil. Out of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in    |
|productive subjects, grow the chapters. The crotch alluded to on a previous page|
|deserves independent mention. It is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two|
|feet in length, which is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale    |
|near the bow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of  |
|the harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the prow.    |
|Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who snatches it up as    |
|readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his rifle from the wall. It is   |
|customary to have two harpoons reposing in the crotch, respectively called the  |
|first and second irons. But these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both  |
|connected with the line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, |
|one instantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the coming    |
|drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It is a doubling  |
|of the chances. But it very often happens that owing to the instantaneous,      |
|violent, convulsive running of the whale upon receiving the first iron, it      |
|becomes impossible for the harpooneer, however lightning-like in his movements, |
|to pitch the second iron into him. Nevertheless, as the second iron is already  |
|connected with the line, and the line is running, hence that weapon must, at    |
|all events, be anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere;    |
|else the most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the water,|
|it accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box line (mentioned in a    |
|preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances, prudently practicable.  |
|But this critical act is not always unattended with the saddest and most fatal  |
|casualties. Furthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown      |
|overboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror, skittishly    |
|curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines, or cutting them, and|
|making a prodigious sensation in all directions. Nor, in general, is it possible|
|to secure it again until the whale is fairly captured and a corpse. Consider,   |
|now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging one unusually strong,|
|active, and knowing whale; when owing to these qualities in him, as well as to  |
|the thousand concurring accidents of such an audacious enterprise, eight or ten |
|loose second irons may be simultaneously dangling about him. For, of course,    |
|each boat is supplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the   |
|first one be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are   |
|faithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several most       |
|important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be painted.       |
|Stubb's whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a calm; so,   |
|forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow business of towing the   |
|trophy to the Pequod. And now, as we eighteen men with our thirty-six arms, and |
|one hundred and eighty thumbs and fingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon   |
|that inert, sluggish corpse in the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all,   |
|except at long intervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness|
|of the mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever they    |
|call it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will draw a bulky     |
|freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this grand argosy we towed    |
|heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead in bulk. Darkness came on; but  |
|three lights up and down in the Pequod's main-rigging dimly guided our way;     |
|till drawing nearer we saw Ahab dropping one of several more lanterns over the  |
|bulwarks. Vacantly eyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual   |
|orders for securing it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman, |
|went his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until morning.      |
|Though, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Ahab had evinced his   |
|customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature was dead, some     |
|vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if  |
|the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain;    |
|and though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not |
|one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought  |
|from the sound on the Pequod's decks, that all hands were preparing to cast     |
|anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the deck, and      |
|thrust rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking links, the vast    |
|corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by the head to the stern,    |
|and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies with its black hull close to    |
|the vessel's and seen through the darkness of the night, which obscured the     |
|spars and rigging aloft, the two--ship and whale, seemed yoked together like    |
|colossal bullocks, whereof one reclines while the other remains standing. A     |
|little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most reliable hold   |
|which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside, is by the flukes or    |
|tail; and as from its greater density that part is relatively heavier than any  |
|other (excepting the side-fins), its flexibility even in death, causes it to    |
|sink low beneath the surface; so that with the hand you cannot get at it from   |
|the boat, in order to put the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously|
|overcome: a small, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer     |
|end, and a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship.    |
|By adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side of      |
|the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily made to    |
|follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last locked fast round the |
|smallest part of the tail, at the point of junction with its broad flukes or    |
|lobes. If moody Ahab was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known  |
|on deck, Stubb, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an unusual     |
|but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was he in that the   |
|staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned to him for the time the |
|sole management of affairs. One small, helping cause of all this liveliness     |
|in Stubb, was soon made strangely manifest. Stubb was a high liver; he was      |
|somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.    |
|"A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut me one   |
|from his small!" Here be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not,     |
|as a general thing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy   |
|defray the current expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds  |
|of the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers who have a |
|genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale designated by Stubb; |
|comprising the tapering extremity of the body. About midnight that steak was cut|
|and cooked; and lighted by two lanterns of sperm oil, Stubb stoutly stood up to |
|his spermaceti supper at the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. |
|Nor was Stubb the only banqueter on whale's flesh that night. Mingling their    |
|mumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks, swarming |
|round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness. The few sleepers   |
|below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp slapping of their tails   |
|against the hull, within a few inches of the sleepers' hearts. Peering over the |
|side you could just see them (as before you heard them) wallowing in the sullen,|
|black waters, and turning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular |
|pieces of the whale of the bigness of a human head. This particular feat of     |
|the shark seems all but miraculous. How at such an apparently unassailable      |
|surface, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains a part  |
|of the universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave on the whale,  |
|may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in countersinking for a   |
|screw. Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks  |
|will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a  |
|table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that  |
|is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table   |
|are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all      |
|gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are     |
|quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were   |
|you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same|
|thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and |
|though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the |
|Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is    |
|to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one   |
|or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places,  |
|and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously    |
|feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them     |
|in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a   |
|dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen |
|that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship,    |
|and the expediency of conciliating the devil. But, as yet, Stubb heeded not     |
|the mumblings of the banquet that was going on so nigh him, no more than the    |
|sharks heeded the smacking of his own epicurean lips. "Cook, cook!--where's     |
|that old Fleece?" he cried at length, widening his legs still further, as if    |
|to form a more secure base for his supper; and, at the same time darting his    |
|fork into the dish, as if stabbing with his lance; "cook, you cook!--sail this  |
|way, cook!" The old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously  |
|roused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came shambling along  |
|from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was something the matter with |
|his knee-pans, which he did not keep well scoured like his other pans; this old |
|Fleece, as they called him, came shuffling and limping along, assisting his step|
|with his tongs, which, after a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron   |
|hoops; this old Ebony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command,|
|came to a dead stop on the opposite side of Stubb's sideboard; when, with both  |
|hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he bowed his arched|
|back still further over, at the same time sideways inclining his head, so as    |
|to bring his best ear into play. "Cook," said Stubb, rapidly lifting a rather   |
|reddish morsel to his mouth, "don't you think this steak is rather overdone?    |
|You've been beating this steak too much, cook; it's too tender. Don't I always  |
|say that to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks now    |
|over the side, don't you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a shindy they  |
|are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to 'em; tell 'em they are welcome to help     |
|themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must keep quiet. Blast me, if   |
|I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and deliver my message. Here, take this    |
|lantern," snatching one from his sideboard; "now then, go and preach to 'em!"   |
|Sullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck to the   |
|bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over the sea, so as to |
|get a good view of his congregation, with the other hand he solemnly flourished |
|his tongs, and leaning far over the side in a mumbling voice began addressing   |
|the sharks, while Stubb, softly crawling behind, overheard all that was said.   |
|"Fellow-critters: I'se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam noise dare.|
|You hear? Stop dat dam smackin' ob de lips! Massa Stubb say dat you can fill    |
|your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you must stop dat dam racket!" |
|"Cook," here interposed Stubb, accompanying the word with a sudden slap on the  |
|shoulder,--"Cook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn't swear that way when you're   |
|preaching. That's no way to convert sinners, cook!" "Who dat? Den preach to     |
|him yourself," sullenly turning to go. "No, cook; go on, go on." "Well, den,    |
|Belubed fellow-critters:"- "Right!" exclaimed Stubb, approvingly, "coax 'em to  |
|it; try that," and Fleece continued. "Do you is all sharks, and by natur wery   |
|woracious, yet I zay to you, fellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness--'top dat   |
|dam slappin' ob de tail! How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam     |
|slappin' and bitin' dare?" "Cook," cried Stubb, collaring him, "I won't have    |
|that swearing. Talk to 'em gentlemanly." Once more the sermon proceeded. "Your  |
|woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don't blame ye so much for; dat is natur, and |
|can't be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is de pint. You is sharks, |
|sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel  |
|is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned. Now, look here, bred'ren, just try  |
|wonst to be cibil, a helping yourselbs from dat whale. Don't be tearin' de      |
|blubber out your neighbour's mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder  |
|to dat whale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale     |
|belong to some one else. I know some o' you has berry brig mout, brigger dan    |
|oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small bellies; so dat de brigness |
|of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to bit off de blubber for de small fry    |
|ob sharks, dat can't get into de scrouge to help demselves." "Well done, old    |
|Fleece!" cried Stubb, "that's Christianity; go on." "No use goin' on; de dam    |
|willains will keep a scougin' and slappin' each oder, Massa Stubb; dey don't    |
|hear one word; no use a-preaching to such dam g'uttons as you call 'em, till    |
|dare bellies is full, and dare bellies is bottomless; and when dey do get 'em   |
|full, dey wont hear you den; for den dey sink in the sea, go fast to sleep on   |
|de coral, and can't hear noting at all, no more, for eber and eber." "Upon my   |
|soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction, Fleece, and      |
|I'll away to my supper." Upon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy   |
|mob, raised his shrill voice, and cried-- "Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de   |
|damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam bellies 'till dey bust--and den     |
|die." "Now, cook," said Stubb, resuming his supper at the capstan; "stand just  |
|where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular attention."  |
|"All 'dention," said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the desired  |
|position. "Well," said Stubb, helping himself freely meanwhile; "I shall now    |
|go back to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you,      |
|cook?" "What dat do wid de 'teak," said the old black, testily. "Silence! How   |
|old are you, cook?" "'Bout ninety, dey say," he gloomily muttered. "And you     |
|have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook, and don't know      |
|yet how to cook a whale-steak?" rapidly bolting another mouthful at the last    |
|word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the question. "Where were you     |
|born, cook?" "'Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin' ober de Roanoke." "Born   |
|in a ferry-boat! That's queer, too. But I want to know what country you were    |
|born in, cook!" "Didn't I say de Roanoke country?" he cried sharply. "No, you   |
|didn't, cook; but I'll tell you what I'm coming to, cook. You must go home      |
|and be born over again; you don't know how to cook a whale-steak yet." "Bress   |
|my soul, if I cook noder one," he growled, angrily, turning round to depart.    |
|"Come back here, cook;--here, hand me those tongs;--now take that bit of steak  |
|there, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be? Take it, I   |
|say"--holding the tongs towards him--"take it, and taste it." Faintly smacking  |
|his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro muttered, "Best cooked    |
|'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy." "Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself   |
|once more; "do you belong to the church?" "Passed one once in Cape-Down," said  |
|the old man sullenly. "And you have once in your life passed a holy church in   |
|Cape-Town, where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers   |
|as his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here, and     |
|tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?" said Stubb. "Where do you |
|expect to go to, cook?" "Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he  |
|spoke. "Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question.     |
|Now what's your answer?" "When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly,  |
|changing his whole air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere; but some     |
|bressed angel will come and fetch him." "Fetch him? How? In a coach and four,   |
|as they fetched Elijah? And fetch him where?" "Up dere," said Fleece, holding   |
|his tongs straight over his head, and keeping it there very solemnly. "So,      |
|then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when you are dead?   |
|But don't you know the higher you climb, the colder it gets? Main-top, eh?"     |
|"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks. "You said up there,    |
|didn't you? and now look yourself, and see where your tongs are pointing. But,  |
|perhaps you expect to get into heaven by crawling through the lubber's hole,    |
|cook; but, no, no, cook, you don't get there, except you go the regular way,    |
|round by the rigging. It's a ticklish business, but must be done, or else it's  |
|no go. But none of us are in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my     |
|orders. Do ye hear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t'other a'top of your   |
|heart, when I'm giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?--that's   |
|your gizzard! Aloft! aloft!--that's it--now you have it. Hold it there now, and |
|pay attention." "All 'dention," said the old black, with both hands placed as   |
|desired, vainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front    |
|at one and the same time. "Well then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours   |
|was so very bad, that I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see   |
|that, don't you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for my |
|private table here, the capstan, I'll tell you what to do so as not to spoil    |
|it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live coal to it with    |
|the other; that done, dish it; d'ye hear? And now to-morrow, cook, when we are  |
|cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by to get the tips of his fins; have them|
|put in pickle. As for the ends of the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now|
|ye may go." But Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.    |
|"Cook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch. D'ye hear?  |
|away you sail, then.--Halloa! stop! make a bow before you go.--Avast heaving    |
|again! Whale-balls for breakfast--don't forget." "Wish, by gor! whale eat him,  |
|'stead of him eat whale. I'm bressed if he ain't more of shark dan Massa Shark  |
|hisself," muttered the old man, limping away; with which sage ejaculation he    |
|went to his hammock. That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds   |
|his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems |
|so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and      |
|philosophy of it. It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of     |
|the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large    |
|prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of the court    |
|obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with    |
|barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of whale. Porpoises,    |
|indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The meat is made into balls     |
|about the size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be   |
|taken for turtle-balls or veal balls. The old monks of Dunfermline were very    |
|fond of them. They had a great porpoise grant from the crown. The fact is, that |
|among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble  |
|dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a     |
|meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite. Only the    |
|most unprejudiced of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the |
|Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have|
|rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous    |
|doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly juicy   |
|and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who long ago were  |
|accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel--that these men actually     |
|lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left     |
|ashore after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps are  |
|called "fritters"; which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, |
|and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives' dough-nuts or oly-cooks,  |
|when fresh. They have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger  |
|can hardly keep his hands off. But what further depreciates the whale as a      |
|civilized dish, is his exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, |
|too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating  |
|as the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid      |
|pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like   |
|the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of   |
|its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless,   |
|many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other substance, and then |
|partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for  |
|the seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry    |
|there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made. In the case of a small Sperm |
|Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken   |
|into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely   |
|resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into |
|a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is    |
|quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks     |
|among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get    |
|to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head    |
|from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And      |
|that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's head     |
|before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks    |
|a sort of reproachfully at him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression. It is not,   |
|perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen    |
|seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in    |
|some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a |
|newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt  |
|the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he   |
|was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have  |
|been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market  |
|of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long    |
|rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's |
|jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for |
|the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming     |
|famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of|
|judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese  |
|to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras. But|
|Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to|
|injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened   |
|gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?--what but the |
|bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your   |
|teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl.    |
|And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of     |
|Cruelty to Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last    |
|month or two that that society passed a resolution to patronise nothing but     |
|steel pens. When in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long    |
|and weary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general     |
|thing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting him in. |
|For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very soon completed;  |
|and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the common usage is to take  |
|in all sail; lash the helm a'lee; and then send every one below to his hammock  |
|till daylight, with the reservation that, until that time, anchor-watches shall |
|be kept; that is, two and two for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation    |
|shall mount the deck to see that all goes well. But sometimes, especially       |
|upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will not answer at all; because such    |
|incalculable hosts of sharks gather round the moored carcase, that were he left |
|so for six hours, say, on a stretch, little more than the skeleton would be     |
|visible by morning. In most other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish |
|do not so largely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably  |
|diminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a         |
|procedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to tickle them  |
|into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the present case with the   |
|Pequod's sharks; though, to be sure, any man unaccustomed to such sights, to    |
|have looked over her side that night, would have almost thought the whole round |
|sea was one huge cheese, and those sharks the maggots in it. Nevertheless,      |
|upon Stubb setting the anchor-watch after his supper was concluded; and when,   |
|accordingly, Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement |
|was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over|
|the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light   |
|over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades,     |
|kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep  |
|into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion  |
|of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their    |
|mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the  |
|foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other's disembowelments, but      |
|like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed   |
|swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the |
|gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and    |
|ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to  |
|lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual  |
|life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of  |
|these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down   |
|the dead lid of his murderous jaw. The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is     |
|made of the very best steel; is about the bigness of a man's spread hand; and   |
|in general shape, corresponds to the garden implement after which it is named;  |
|only its sides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than |
|the lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when being used |
|is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a stiff pole, from     |
|twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle. "Queequeg no care what    |
|god made him shark," said the savage, agonizingly lifting his hand up and down; |
|"wedder Fejee god or Nantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam   |
|Ingin." It was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio     |
|professors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Pequod was turned    |
|into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would have thought we   |
|were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods. In the first place, the |
|enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous things comprising a cluster of  |
|blocks generally painted green, and which no single man can possibly lift--this |
|vast bunch of grapes was swayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the     |
|lower mast-head, the strongest point anywhere above a ship's deck. The end of   |
|the hawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted to   |
|the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over the whale; |
|to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one hundred pounds, was     |
|attached. And now suspended in stages over the side, Starbuck and Stubb, the    |
|mates, armed with their long spades, began cutting a hole in the body for the   |
|insertion of the hook just above the nearest of the two side-fins. This done,   |
|a broad, semicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and     |
|the main body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving in    |
|one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship careens over   |
|on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads of an old house in    |
|frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the  |
|sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the|
|windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift,|
|startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards|
|from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the|
|disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber   |
|envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off |
|from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it.   |
|For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale   |
|rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly   |
|peels off along the line called the "scarf," simultaneously cut by the spades   |
|of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off,    |
|and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and |
|higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the windlass    |
|then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious blood-dripping mass  |
|sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and every one present must take   |
|good heed to dodge it when it swings, else it may box his ears and pitch him    |
|headlong overboard. One of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long,  |
|keen weapon called a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously     |
|slices out a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into      |
|this hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then hooked so     |
|as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for what follows.     |
|Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands to stand off, once    |
|more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a few sidelong, desperate,   |
|lunging slicings, severs it completely in twain; so that while the short lower  |
|part is still fast, the long upper strip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, |
|and is all ready for lowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, and   |
|while the one tackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the |
|other is slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the main  |
|hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the blubber-room.     |
|Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep coiling away the long     |
|blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of plaited serpents. And thus the |
|work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale |
|and windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling,  |
|the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally,    |
|by way of assuaging the general friction. I have given no small attention to    |
|that not unvexed subject, the skin of the whale. I have had controversies       |
|about it with experienced whalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My   |
|original opinion remains unchanged; but it is only an opinion. The question is, |
|what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you know what his blubber is.  |
|That blubber is something of the consistence of firm, close-grained beef, but   |
|tougher, more elastic and compact, and ranges from eight or ten to twelve and   |
|fifteen inches in thickness. Now, however preposterous it may at first seem to  |
|talk of any creature's skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, |
|yet in point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption; because |
|you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the whale's body but that|
|same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer of any animal, if reasonably   |
|dense, what can that be but the skin? True, from the unmarred dead body of      |
|the whale, you may scrape off with your hand an infinitely thin, transparent    |
|substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is     |
|almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when    |
|it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I      |
|have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books. It is    |
|transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed page, I have     |
|sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At    |
|any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as  |
|you may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely thin,  |
|isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is   |
|not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the      |
|skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin   |
|of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born  |
|child. But no more of this. Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale;   |
|then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield    |
|the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in     |
|quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three     |
|fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had   |
|of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument |
|yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you     |
|have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the     |
|whale's skin. In life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least  |
|among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely  |
|crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in thick array, something |
|like those in the finest Italian line engravings. But these marks do not seem   |
|to be impressed upon the isinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be    |
|seen through it, as if they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this     |
|all. In some instances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as     |
|in a veritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations.     |
|These are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers on      |
|the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to use in     |
|the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the hieroglyphics upon one     |
|Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old  |
|Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks   |
|of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked       |
|whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me      |
|of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the     |
|Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his  |
|flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appearance, by reason of    |
|numerous rude scratches, altogether of an irregular, random aspect. I should    |
|say that those New England rocks on the sea-coast, which Agassiz imagines to    |
|bear the marks of violent scraping contact with vast floating icebergs--I       |
|should say, that those rocks must not a little resemble the Sperm Whale in this |
|particular. It also seems to me that such scratches in the whale are probably   |
|made by hostile contact with other whales; for I have most remarked them in     |
|the large, full-grown bulls of the species. A word or two more concerning this  |
|matter of the skin or blubber of the whale. It has already been said, that it   |
|is stript from him in long pieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms,  |
|this one is very happy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his |
|blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho |
|slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of this cosy   |
|blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep himself comfortable in|
|all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides. What would become of a Greenland   |
|whale, say, in those shuddering, icy seas of the North, if unsupplied with his  |
|cosy surtout? True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean |
|waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose  |
|very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee   |
|of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, |
|like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his blood, and he dies.    |
|How wonderful is it then--except after explanation--that this great monster,    |
|to whom corporeal warmth is as indispensable as it is to man; how wonderful     |
|that he should be found at home, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic  |
|waters! where, when seamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months     |
|afterwards, perpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly   |
|is found glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been proved  |
|by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than that of a Borneo  |
|negro in summer. It does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a    |
|strong individual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare    |
|virtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the    |
|whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world    |
|without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole.  |
|Like the great dome of St. Peter's, and like the great whale, retain, O man!    |
|in all seasons a temperature of thine own. But how easy and how hopeless to     |
|teach these fine things! Of erections, how few are domed like St. Peter's! of   |
|creatures, how few vast as the whale! Haul in the chains! Let the carcase go    |
|astern! The vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the |
|beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has   |
|not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats   |
|more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate       |
|sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose|
|beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless |
|phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so      |
|floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the  |
|murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous |
|sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of  |
|the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that great mass of death floats |
|on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives. There's a most doleful and most  |
|mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all in pious mourning, the air-sharks all     |
|punctiliously in black or speckled. In life but few of them would have helped   |
|the whale, I ween, if peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of    |
|his funeral they most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from |
|which not the mightiest whale is free. Nor is this the end. Desecrated as the   |
|body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some  |
|timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance    |
|obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating  |
|in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale's|
|unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log--SHOALS, ROCKS, |
|AND BREAKERS HEREABOUTS: BEWARE! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships       |
|shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because      |
|their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There's your law    |
|of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your    |
|obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even |
|hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy! Thus, while in life the great whale's   |
|body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a  |
|powerless panic to a world. Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are  |
|other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who |
|believe in them. It should not have been omitted that previous to completely    |
|stripping the body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of     |
|the Sperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced whale   |
|surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason. Consider that the  |
|whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck; on the contrary, where    |
|his head and body seem to join, there, in that very place, is the thickest part |
|of him. Remember, also, that the surgeon must operate from above, some eight or |
|ten feet intervening between him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden|
|in a discoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear in  |
|mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep |
|in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one  |
|single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer   |
|clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a     |
|critical point hard by its insertion into the skull. Do you not marvel, then,   |
|at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?     |
|When first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a cable till   |
|the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small whale it is hoisted on |
|deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a full grown leviathan this is   |
|impossible; for the sperm whale's head embraces nearly one third of his entire  |
|bulk, and completely to suspend such a burden as that, even by the immense      |
|tackles of a whaler, this were as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch   |
|barn in jewellers' scales. The Pequod's whale being decapitated and the body    |
|stripped, the head was hoisted against the ship's side--about half way out of   |
|the sea, so that it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. |
|And there with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of the  |
|enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm on that side|
|projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that blood-dripping head hung to |
|the Pequod's waist like the giant Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith. When  |
|this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went below to their |
|dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but now deserted deck. An    |
|intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding |
|its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea. A short space elapsed, and up    |
|into this noiselessness came Ahab alone from his cabin. Taking a few turns on   |
|the quarter-deck, he paused to gaze over the side, then slowly getting into     |
|the main-chains he took Stubb's long spade--still remaining there after the     |
|whale's Decapitation--and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended |
|mass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood leaning over |
|with eyes attentively fixed on this head. It was a black and hooded head; and   |
|hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx's in the  |
|desert. "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though    |
|ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,  |
|mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou  |
|hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has      |
|moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust,    |
|and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate      |
|earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful  |
|water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or      |
|diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers   |
|would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when     |
|leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting  |
|wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the     |
|murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell  |
|into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed   |
|on unharmed--while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would    |
|have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast |
|seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one    |
|syllable is thine!" "Sail ho!" cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.|
|"Aye? Well, now, that's cheering," cried Ahab, suddenly erecting himself, while |
|whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. "That lively cry upon this      |
|deadly calm might almost convert a better man.--Where away?" "Three points on   |
|the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze to us! "Better and better, |
|man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and to my breezelessness     |
|bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are |
|your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has  |
|its cunning duplicate in mind." Hand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the  |
|breeze came faster than the ship, and soon the Pequod began to rock. By and     |
|by, through the glass the stranger's boats and manned mast-heads proved her     |
|a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and shooting by, apparently    |
|making a passage to some other ground, the Pequod could not hope to reach her.  |
|So the signal was set to see what response would be made. Here be it said, that |
|like the vessels of military marines, the ships of the American Whale Fleet     |
|have each a private signal; all which signals being collected in a book with    |
|the names of the respective vessels attached, every captain is provided with    |
|it. Thereby, the whale commanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the  |
|ocean, even at considerable distances and with no small facility. The Pequod's  |
|signal was at last responded to by the stranger's setting her own; which proved |
|the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket. Squaring her yards, she bore down,    |
|ranged abeam under the Pequod's lee, and lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh;     |
|but, as the side-ladder was being rigged by Starbuck's order to accommodate     |
|the visiting captain, the stranger in question waved his hand from his boat's   |
|stern in token of that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that|
|the Jeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her captain,   |
|was fearful of infecting the Pequod's company. For, though himself and boat's   |
|crew remained untainted, and though his ship was half a rifle-shot off, and     |
|an incorruptible sea and air rolling and flowing between; yet conscientiously   |
|adhering to the timid quarantine of the land, he peremptorily refused to come   |
|into direct contact with the Pequod. But this did by no means prevent all       |
|communications. Preserving an interval of some few yards between itself and     |
|the ship, the Jeroboam's boat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to    |
|keep parallel to the Pequod, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this |
|time it blew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times |
|by the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed some      |
|way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper bearings again.    |
|Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now and then, a conversation  |
|was sustained between the two parties; but at intervals not without still       |
|another interruption of a very different sort. Pulling an oar in the Jeroboam's |
|boat, was a man of a singular appearance, even in that wild whaling life where  |
|individual notabilities make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish |
|man, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant yellow    |
|hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut tinge enveloped |
|him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on his wrists. A deep,     |
|settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes. So soon as this figure had been      |
|first descried, Stubb had exclaimed--"That's he! that's he!--the long-togged    |
|scaramouch the Town-Ho's company told us of!" Stubb here alluded to a strange   |
|story told of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time previous|
|when the Pequod spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account and what was       |
|subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in question had gained a    |
|wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the Jeroboam. His story was this: |
|He had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna Shakers,   |
|where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret meetings having     |
|several times descended from heaven by the way of a trap-door, announcing       |
|the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he carried in his vest-pocket;    |
|but, which, instead of containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with    |
|laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for|
|Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, |
|common-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the    |
|Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway upon the ship's    |
|getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced |
|himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard.  |
|He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the|
|isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness |
|with which he declared these things;--the dark, daring play of his sleepless,   |
|excited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real delirium, united |
|to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of the ignorant crew, with  |
|an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they were afraid of him. As such a man,  |
|however, was not of much practical use in the ship, especially as he refused    |
|to work except when he pleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been    |
|rid of him; but apprised that that individual's intention was to land him in    |
|the first convenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and     |
|vials--devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in case this |
|intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his disciples among the |
|crew, that at last in a body they went to the captain and told him if Gabriel   |
|was sent from the ship, not a man of them would remain. He was therefore forced |
|to relinquish his plan. Nor would they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, |
|say or do what he would; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete  |
|freedom of the ship. The consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared  |
|little or nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had broken  |
|out, he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the plague, as he called|
|it, was at his sole command; nor should it be stayed but according to his good  |
|pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor devils, cringed, and some of them fawned     |
|before him; in obedience to his instructions, sometimes rendering him personal  |
|homage, as to a god. Such things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous,    |
|they are true. Nor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to    |
|the measureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless       |
|power of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to return to  |
|the Pequod. "I fear not thy epidemic, man," said Ahab from the bulwarks, to     |
|Captain Mayhew, who stood in the boat's stern; "come on board." But now Gabriel |
|started to his feet. "Think, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware    |
|of the horrible plague!" "Gabriel! Gabriel!" cried Captain Mayhew; "thou must   |
|either--" But that instant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its     |
|seethings drowned all speech. "Hast thou seen the White Whale?" demanded Ahab,  |
|when the boat drifted back. "Think, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk!   |
|Beware of the horrible tail!" "I tell thee again, Gabriel, that--" But again    |
|the boat tore ahead as if dragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, |
|while a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional |
|caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the hoisted sperm |
|whale's head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was seen eyeing it with   |
|rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel nature seemed to warrant. When  |
|this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story concerning Moby      |
|Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his   |
|name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him. It seemed   |
|that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a whale-ship, her  |
|people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he   |
|had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the    |
|captain against attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen;  |
|in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being    |
|than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when,      |
|some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads,  |
|Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain     |
|himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all the    |
|archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five  |
|men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and|
|many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron    |
|fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing     |
|one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to     |
|the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was    |
|standing up in his boat's bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was|
|venting his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance |
|for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, |
|fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. |
|Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily    |
|into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the    |
|distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of |
|any oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank. It is well to parenthesize here,|
|that of the fatal accidents in the Sperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps    |
|almost as frequent as any. Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is     |
|thus annihilated; oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board,    |
|in which the headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body.  |
|But strangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one, when |
|the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is discernible; the  |
|man being stark dead. The whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was   |
|plainly descried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek--"The vial! the vial!"|
|Gabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of the     |
|whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added influence; because  |
|his credulous disciples believed that he had specifically fore-announced it,    |
|instead of only making a general prophecy, which any one might have done, and   |
|so have chanced to hit one of many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became  |
|a nameless terror to the ship. Mayhew having concluded his narration, Ahab put  |
|such questions to him, that the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring    |
|whether he intended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To    |
|which Ahab answered--"Aye." Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to his |
|feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointed |
|finger--"Think, think of the blasphemer--dead, and down there!--beware of the   |
|blasphemer's end!" Ahab stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, "Captain,   |
|I have just bethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy     |
|officers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag." Every whale-ship takes|
|out a goodly number of letters for various ships, whose delivery to the persons |
|to whom they may be addressed, depends upon the mere chance of encountering     |
|them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many    |
|are only received after attaining an age of two or three years or more. Soon    |
|Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely tumbled, damp, and   |
|covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in consequence of being kept in a    |
|dark locker of the cabin. Of such a letter, Death himself might well have been  |
|the post-boy. "Can'st not read it?" cried Ahab. "Give it me, man. Aye, aye,     |
|it's but a dim scrawl;--what's this?" As he was studying it out, Starbuck took  |
|a long cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to insert |
|the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without its coming any  |
|closer to the ship. Meantime, Ahab holding the letter, muttered, "Mr. Har--yes, |
|Mr. Harry--(a woman's pinny hand,--the man's wife, I'll wager)--Aye--Mr. Harry  |
|Macey, Ship Jeroboam;--why it's Macey, and he's dead!" "Poor fellow! poor       |
|fellow! and from his wife," sighed Mayhew; "but let me have it." "Nay, keep     |
|it thyself," cried Gabriel to Ahab; "thou art soon going that way." "Curses     |
|throttle thee!" yelled Ahab. "Captain Mayhew, stand by now to receive it"; and  |
|taking the fatal missive from Starbuck's hands, he caught it in the slit of     |
|the pole, and reached it over towards the boat. But as he did so, the oarsmen   |
|expectantly desisted from rowing; the boat drifted a little towards the ship's  |
|stern; so that, as if by magic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel's |
|eager hand. He clutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling   |
|the letter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Ahab's     |
|feet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and|
|in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod. As, after   |
|this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the whale, many|
|strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair. In the tumultuous  |
|business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards|
|and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are|
|wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time|
|everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors|
|the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was      |
|mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale's back, the blubber-hook |
|was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But   |
|how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole?  |
|It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as   |
|harpooneer, to descend upon the monster's back for the special purpose referred |
|to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall     |
|remain on the whale till the whole tensing or stripping operation is concluded. |
|The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the        |
|immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of  |
|the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the|
|water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion |
|in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume--a shirt and socks--in    |
|which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had   |
|a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage's   |
|bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second     |
|one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking      |
|that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale's back. You have seen Italian   |
|organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship's steep |
|side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called  |
|in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round |
|his waist. It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we |
|proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends;    |
|fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that|
|for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor     |
|Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honour demanded, that instead|
|of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated |
|Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor   |
|could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond      |
|entailed. So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,   |
|that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that |
|my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my    |
|free will had received a mortal wound; and that another's mistake or misfortune |
|might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw    |
|that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity   |
|never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering--while  |
|I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten |
|to jam him--still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine   |
|was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases,   |
|he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other      |
|mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends   |
|you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution,|
|you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. |
|But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it  |
|so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that,  |
|do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it. The monkey-rope    |
|is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Pequod that the monkey and      |
|his holder were ever tied together. This improvement upon the original usage    |
|was introduced by no less a man than Stubb, in order to afford the imperilled   |
|harpooneer the strongest possible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance  |
|of his monkey-rope holder. I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg  |
|from between the whale and the ship--where he would occasionally fall, from     |
|the incessant rolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming    |
|jeopardy he was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during    |
|the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent    |
|blood which began to flow from the carcass--the rabid creatures swarmed round   |
|it like bees in a beehive. And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who    |
|often pushed them aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible|
|were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise          |
|miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man. Nevertheless, it may |
|well be believed that since they have such a ravenous finger in the pie, it is  |
|deemed but wise to look sharp to them. Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope,    |
|with which I now and then jerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to   |
|the maw of what seemed a peculiarly ferocious shark--he was provided with still |
|another protection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego and  |
|Daggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen whale-spades,      |
|wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could reach. This procedure   |
|of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and benevolent of them. They      |
|meant Queequeg's best happiness, I admit; but in their hasty zeal to befriend   |
|him, and from the circumstance that both he and the sharks were at times half   |
|hidden by the blood-muddled water, those indiscreet spades of theirs would come |
|nearer amputating a leg than a tall. But poor Queequeg, I suppose, straining    |
|and gasping there with that great iron hook--poor Queequeg, I suppose, only     |
|prayed to his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods. Well, well,|
|my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked      |
|off the rope to every swell of the sea--what matters it, after all? Are you     |
|not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That    |
|unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades,    |
|your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and    |
|peril, poor lad. But courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Queequeg.   |
|For now, as with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last     |
|climbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily trembling over   |
|the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent, consolatory glance       |
|hands him--what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye gods! hands him a cup of    |
|tepid ginger and water! "Ginger? Do I smell ginger?" suspiciously asked Stubb,  |
|coming near. "Yes, this must be ginger," peering into the as yet untasted       |
|cup. Then standing as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards      |
|the astonished steward slowly saying, "Ginger? ginger? and will you have the    |
|goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of ginger? Ginger! is |
|ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to kindle a fire in this shivering  |
|cannibal? Ginger!--what the devil is ginger?--sea-coal? firewood?--lucifer      |
|matches?--tinder?--gunpowder?--what the devil is ginger, I say, that you offer  |
|this cup to our poor Queequeg here." "There is some sneaking Temperance Society |
|movement about this business," he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who |
|had just come from forward. "Will you look at that kannakin, sir; smell of it,  |
|if you please." Then watching the mate's countenance, he added, "The steward,   |
|Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap to Queequeg, there,  |
|this instant off the whale. Is the steward an apothecary, sir? and may I ask    |
|whether this is the sort of bitters by which he blows back the life into a      |
|half-drowned man?" "I trust not," said Starbuck, "it is poor stuff enough."     |
|"Aye, aye, steward," cried Stubb, "we'll teach you to drug it harpooneer; none  |
|of your apothecary's medicine here; you want to poison us, do ye? You have got  |
|out insurances on our lives and want to murder us all, and pocket the proceeds, |
|do ye?" "It was not me," cried Dough-Boy, "it was Aunt Charity that brought     |
|the ginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits, but    |
|only this ginger-jub--so she called it." "Ginger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take |
|that! and run along with ye to the lockers, and get something better. I hope I  |
|do no wrong, Mr. Starbuck. It is the captain's orders--grog for the harpooneer  |
|on a whale." "Enough," replied Starbuck, "only don't hit him again, but--" "Oh, |
|I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of that sort;   |
|and this fellow's a weazel. What were you about saying, sir?" "Only this: go    |
|down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself." When Stubb reappeared, he    |
|came with a dark flask in one hand, and a sort of tea-caddy in the other. The   |
|first contained strong spirits, and was handed to Queequeg; the second was      |
|Aunt Charity's gift, and that was freely given to the waves. It must be borne   |
|in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale's prodigious head hanging to   |
|the Pequod's side. But we must let it continue hanging there a while till we    |
|can get a chance to attend to it. For the present other matters press, and the  |
|best we can do now for the head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold. Now,   |
|during the past night and forenoon, the Pequod had gradually drifted into a sea,|
|which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit, gave unusual tokens of the     |
|vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the Leviathan that but few supposed to   |
|be at this particular time lurking anywhere near. And though all hands commonly |
|disdained the capture of those inferior creatures; and though the Pequod was not|
|commissioned to cruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of    |
|them near the Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale had  |
|been brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the announcement   |
|was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day, if opportunity offered.|
|Nor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two boats,     |
|Stubb's and Flask's, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further and further away,|
|they at last became almost invisible to the men at the mast-head. But suddenly  |
|in the distance, they saw a great heap of tumultuous white water, and soon      |
|after news came from aloft that one or both the boats must be fast. An interval |
|passed and the boats were in plain sight, in the act of being dragged right     |
|towards the ship by the towing whale. So close did the monster come to the hull,|
|that at first it seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going down in a  |
|maelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared from view, as |
|if diving under the keel. "Cut, cut!" was the cry from the ship to the boats,   |
|which, for one instant, seemed on the point of being brought with a deadly dash |
|against the vessel's side. But having plenty of line yet in the tubs, and the   |
|whale not sounding very rapidly, they paid out abundance of rope, and at the    |
|same time pulled with all their might so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few |
|minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while they still slacked out   |
|the tightened line in one direction, and still plied their oars in another,     |
|the contending strain threatened to take them under. But it was only a few      |
|feet advance they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did gain it;   |
|when instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel,  |
|as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under    |
|her bows, snapping and quivering; and so flinging off its drippings, that the   |
|drops fell like bits of broken glass on the water, while the whale beyond also  |
|rose to sight, and once more the boats were free to fly. But the fagged whale   |
|abated his speed, and blindly altering his course, went round the stern of the  |
|ship towing the two boats after him, so that they performed a complete circuit. |
|Meantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close flanking him   |
|on both sides, Stubb answered Flask with lance for lance; and thus round and    |
|round the Pequod the battle went, while the multitudes of sharks that had before|
|swum round the Sperm Whale's body, rushed to the fresh blood that was spilled,  |
|thirstily drinking at every new gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new    |
|bursting fountains that poured from the smitten rock. At last his spout grew    |
|thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he turned upon his back a corpse.   |
|While the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes, and in  |
|other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, some conversation ensued   |
|between them. "I wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard,"    |
|said Stubb, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so     |
|ignoble a leviathan. "Wants with it?" said Flask, coiling some spare line in    |
|the boat's bow, "did you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm    |
|Whale's head hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale's|
|on the larboard; did you never hear, Stubb, that that ship can never afterwards |
|capsize?" "Why not? "I don't know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah |
|saying so, and he seems to know all about ships' charms. But I sometimes think  |
|he'll charm the ship to no good at last. I don't half like that chap, Stubb. Did|
|you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved into a snake's head,   |
|Stubb?" "Sink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of    |
|a dark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look down    |
|there, Flask"--pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both hands--"Aye,|
|will I! Flask, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in disguise. Do you believe |
|that cock and bull story about his having been stowed away on board ship? He's  |
|the devil, I say. The reason why you don't see his tail, is because he tucks it |
|up out of sight; he carries it coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him!   |
|now that I think of it, he's always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his |
|boots." "He sleeps in his boots, don't he? He hasn't got any hammock; but I've  |
|seen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging." "No doubt, and it's because of his|
|cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye see, in the eye of the rigging." "What's   |
|the old man have so much to do with him for?" "Striking up a swap or a bargain, |
|I suppose." "Bargain?--about what?" "Why, do ye see, the old man is hard bent   |
|after that White Whale, and the devil there is trying to come round him, and    |
|get him to swap away his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort,  |
|and then he'll surrender Moby Dick." "Pooh! Stubb, you are skylarking; how can  |
|Fedallah do that?" "I don't know, Flask, but the devil is a curious chap, and   |
|a wicked one, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the     |
|old flag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and gentlemanlike,   |
|and inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he was at home, and asked  |
|the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching his hoofs, up and says, 'I want  |
|John.' 'What for?' says the old governor. 'What business is that of yours,' says|
|the devil, getting mad,--'I want to use him.' 'Take him,' says the governor--and|
|by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the Asiatic cholera before he |
|got through with him, I'll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look sharp--ain't|
|you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead, and let's get the whale alongside."|
|"I think I remember some such story as you were telling," said Flask, when at   |
|last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden towards the ship,    |
|"but I can't remember where." "Three Spaniards? Adventures of those three       |
|bloody-minded soladoes? Did ye read it there, Flask? I guess ye did?" "No: never|
|saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me, Stubb, do you suppose   |
|that that devil you was speaking of just now, was the same you say is now on    |
|board the Pequod?" "Am I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn't the  |
|devil live for ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see   |
|any parson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a latch-key to|
|get into the admiral's cabin, don't you suppose he can crawl into a porthole?   |
|Tell me that, Mr. Flask?" "How old do you suppose Fedallah is, Stubb?" "Do you  |
|see that mainmast there?" pointing to the ship; "well, that's the figure one;   |
|now take all the hoops in the Pequod's hold, and string along in a row with     |
|that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that wouldn't begin to be Fedallah's   |
|age. Nor all the coopers in creation couldn't show hoops enough to make oughts  |
|enough." "But see here, Stubb, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you|
|meant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if he's so old|
|as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going to live for ever, what  |
|good will it do to pitch him overboard--tell me that? "Give him a good ducking, |
|anyhow." "But he'd crawl back." "Duck him again; and keep ducking him." "Suppose|
|he should take it into his head to duck you, though--yes, and drown you--what   |
|then?" "I should like to see him try it; I'd give him such a pair of black eyes |
|that he wouldn't dare to show his face in the admiral's cabin again for a long  |
|while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he lives, and hereabouts on the |
|upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I'm  |
|afraid of the devil? Who's afraid of him, except the old governor who daresn't  |
|catch him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about  |
|kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the     |
|devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!" "Do you suppose       |
|Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Ahab?" "Do I suppose it? You'll know it before |
|long, Flask. But I am going now to keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see   |
|anything very suspicious going on, I'll just take him by the nape of his neck,  |
|and say--Look here, Beelzebub, you don't do it; and if he makes any fuss, by    |
|the Lord I'll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan, |
|and give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come short off at |
|the stump--do you see; and then, I rather guess when he finds himself docked in |
|that queer fashion, he'll sneak off without the poor satisfaction of feeling his|
|tail between his legs." "And what will you do with the tail, Stubb?" "Do with   |
|it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;--what else?" "Now, do you mean what|
|you say, and have been saying all along, Stubb?" "Mean or not mean, here we are |
|at the ship." The boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side,|
|where fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for securing him.|
|"Didn't I tell you so?" said Flask; "yes, you'll soon see this right whale's    |
|head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti's." In good time, Flask's saying proved|
|true. As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, |
|now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though      |
|sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's|
|head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and     |
|you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep    |
|trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and     |
|then you will float light and right. In disposing of the body of a right whale, |
|when brought alongside the ship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take |
|place as in the case of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is|
|cut off whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed and |
|hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone attached to what is called  |
|the crown-piece. But nothing like this, in the present case, had been done. The |
|carcases of both whales had dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little|
|resembled a mule carrying a pair of overburdening panniers. Meantime, Fedallah  |
|was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever and anon glancing from the   |
|deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, |
|that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at |
|all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on,   |
|Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing   |
|things. Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us    |
|join them, and lay together our own. Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the|
|Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the    |
|only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two   |
|extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference    |
|between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is      |
|this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we may freely go from one    |
|to the other, by merely stepping across the deck:--where, I should like to      |
|know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here? In |
|the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads.    |
|Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical  |
|symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is more|
|character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield  |
|the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present   |
|instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his  |
|head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short,|
|he is what the fishermen technically call a "grey-headed whale." Let us now note|
|what is least dissimilar in these heads--namely, the two most important organs, |
|the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the   |
|angle of either whale's jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a     |
|lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all     |
|proportion is it to the magnitude of the head. Now, from this peculiar sideway  |
|position of the whale's eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object       |
|which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern. In a word, the  |
|position of the whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may   |
|fancy, for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects|
|through your ears. You would find that you could only command some thirty       |
|degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight; and about      |
|thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, |
|with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more   |
|than if he were stealing upon you from behind. In a word, you would have two    |
|backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for  |
|what is it that makes the front of a man--what, indeed, but his eyes? Moreover, |
|while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so planted    |
|as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one picture and  |
|not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale's eyes, effectually    |
|divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between      |
|them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, of course,    |
|must wholly separate the impressions which each independent organ imparts.      |
|The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and another   |
|distinct picture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and  |
|nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the world from a |
|sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with the whale, these two |
|sashes are separately inserted, making two distinct windows, but sadly impairing|
|the view. This peculiarity of the whale's eyes is a thing always to be borne    |
|in mind in the fishery; and to be remembered by the reader in some subsequent   |
|scenes. A curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this   |
|visual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a hint. So  |
|long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is involuntary;   |
|that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever objects are before    |
|him. Nevertheless, any one's experience will teach him, that though he can take |
|in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible for|
|him, attentively, and completely, to examine any two things--however large or   |
|however small--at one and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side |
|by side and touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two objects,|
|and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one   |
|of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will   |
|be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness. How is it, then, with |
|the whale? True, both his eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is  |
|his brain so much more comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he |
|can at the same moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one  |
|on one side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he can,  |
|then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to|
|go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid. Nor, strictly |
|investigated, is there any incongruity in this comparison. It may be but an     |
|idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the extraordinary vacillations  |
|of movement displayed by some whales when beset by three or four boats; the     |
|timidity and liability to queer frights, so common to such whales; I think      |
|that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in  |
|which their divided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve    |
|them. But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an     |
|entire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for hours,   |
|and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into  |
|the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it. It   |
|is lodged a little behind the eye. With respect to their ears, this important   |
|difference is to be observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the   |
|ear of the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely and   |
|evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from       |
|without. Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the    |
|world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is     |
|smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's     |
|great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that|
|make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.--Why then do   |
|you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it. Let us now with whatever levers   |
|and steam-engines we have at hand, cant over the sperm whale's head, that it    |
|may lie bottom up; then, ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down  |
|the mouth; and were it not that the body is now completely separated from it,   |
|with a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his     |
|stomach. But let us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where we      |
|are. What a really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling,   |
|lined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal     |
|satins. But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems    |
|like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one end,    |
|instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose     |
|its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas! it proves    |
|to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling  |
|force. But far more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea,     |
|you see some sulky whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw,    |
|some fifteen feet long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body,    |
|for all the world like a ship's jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only    |
|dispirited; out of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges|
|of his jaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a   |
|reproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.    |
|In most cases this lower jaw--being easily unhinged by a practised artist--is   |
|disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth,   |
|and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen   |
|fashion all sorts of curious articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and    |
|handles to riding-whips. With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board,  |
|as if it were an anchor; and when the proper time comes--some few days after the|
|other work--Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists,    |
|are set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums;  |
|then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft, |
|they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of wild |
|wood lands. There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much     |
|worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is   |
|afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building houses.     |
|Crossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right Whale's head.  |
|As in general shape the noble Sperm Whale's head may be compared to a Roman     |
|war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly rounded); so, at a     |
|broad view, the Right Whale's head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a    |
|gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened  |
|its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that    |
|old woman of the nursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably  |
|be lodged, she and all her progeny. But as you come nearer to this great head   |
|it begins to assume different aspects, according to your point of view. If you  |
|stand on its summit and look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take   |
|the whole head for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in |
|its sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange, crested,|
|comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass--this green, barnacled thing,     |
|which the Greenlanders call the "crown," and the Southern fishers the "bonnet"  |
|of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes solely on this, you would take the head    |
|for the trunk of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch. At any rate,  |
|when you watch those live crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea   |
|will be almost sure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed  |
|by the technical term "crown" also bestowed upon it; in which case you will take|
|great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a diademed king  |
|of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for him in this marvellous  |
|manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace |
|a diadem. Look at that hanging lower lip! what a huge sulk and pout is there!   |
|a sulk and pout, by carpenter's measurement, about twenty feet long and five    |
|feet deep; a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and      |
|more. A great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.     |
|The fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an important     |
|interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when earthquakes caused the beach |
|to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery threshold, we now slide into the     |
|mouth. Upon my word were I at Mackinaw, I should take this to be the inside     |
|of an Indian wigwam. Good Lord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is   |
|about twelve feet high, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a    |
|regular ridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us   |
|with those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone, say     |
|three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the head or     |
|crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere been cursorily      |
|mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through      |
|which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains    |
|the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding    |
|time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there|
|are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen   |
|calculate the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though|
|the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor  |
|of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far  |
|greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable. In old|
|times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning these   |
|blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous "whiskers" inside of the |
|whale's mouth;* another, "hogs' bristles"; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt    |
|uses the following elegant language: "There are about two hundred and fifty     |
|fins growing on each side of his upper CHOP, which arch over his tongue on each |
|side of his mouth." This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of   |
|whisker, or rather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the|
|upper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts impart a    |
|rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn countenance. As every one  |
|knows, these same "hogs' bristles," "fins," "whiskers," "blinds," or whatever   |
|you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances.|
|But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen|
|Anne's time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the  |
|fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the|
|whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do  |
|we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent   |
|spread over the same bone. But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a   |
|moment, and, standing in the Right Whale's mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing|
|all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think  |
|you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes? |
|For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest Turkey--the tongue, which|
|is glued, as it were, to the floor of the mouth. It is very fat and tender,     |
|and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting it on deck. This particular tongue now    |
|before us; at a passing glance I should say it was a six-barreler; that is, it  |
|will yield you about that amount of oil. Ere this, you must have plainly seen   |
|the truth of what I started with--that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have |
|almost entirely different heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale's there is |
|no great well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible of a   |
|lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale's. Nor in the Sperm Whale are there any of those|
|blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely anything of a tongue. Again, the|
|Right Whale has two external spout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one. Look your   |
|last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie together; for    |
|one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in  |
|following. Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the   |
|same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now    |
|faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born |
|of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression.|
|See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, so as|
|firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous|
|practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a    |
|Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his     |
|latter years. Ere quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale's head, I would have |
|you, as a sensible physiologist, simply--particularly remark its front aspect,  |
|in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you investigate it now with    |
|the sole view of forming to yourself some unexaggerated, intelligent estimate   |
|of whatever battering-ram power may be lodged there. Here is a vital point; for |
|you must either satisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever    |
|remain an infidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events,|
|perhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history. You observe that in the   |
|ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale, the front of his head presents   |
|an almost wholly vertical plane to the water; you observe that the lower part   |
|of that front slopes considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat |
|for the long socket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that    |
|the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though   |
|your own mouth were entirely under your chin. Moreover you observe that the     |
|whale has no external nose; and that what nose he has--his spout hole--is on    |
|the top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides of     |
|his head, nearly one third of his entire length from the front. Wherefore, you  |
|must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale's head is a dead,     |
|blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever. |
|Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward  |
|sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone;  |
|and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full |
|cranial development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.   |
|Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most|
|delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the substance    |
|which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy. In some previous     |
|place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body of the whale, as   |
|the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head; but with this difference:      |
|about the head this envelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness,  |
|inestimable by any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon,    |
|the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from  |
|it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses'     |
|hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it. Bethink yourself also of  |
|another thing. When two large, loaded Indiamen chance to crowd and crush towards|
|each other in the docks, what do the sailors do? They do not suspend between    |
|them, at the point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or   |
|wood. No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the  |
|thickest and toughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which|
|would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By itself     |
|this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But supplementary    |
|to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess    |
|what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or   |
|contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision    |
|in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now     |
|depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high  |
|elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its       |
|envelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically    |
|occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there may     |
|possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with the outer    |
|air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction. If this |
|be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable   |
|and destructive of all elements contributes. Now, mark. Unerringly impelling    |
|this dead, impregnable, uninjurable wall, and this most buoyant thing within;   |
|there swims behind it all a mass of tremendous life, only to be adequately      |
|estimated as piled wood is--by the cord; and all obedient to one volition,      |
|as the smallest insect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the    |
|specialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this expansive |
|monster; when I shall show you some of his more inconsiderable braining feats;  |
|I trust you will have renounced all ignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide |
|by this; that though the Sperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of     |
|Darien, and mixed the Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair |
|of your eye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and    |
|sentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander giants only  |
|to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials then? What befell the   |
|weakling youth lifting the dread goddess's veil at Lais? Now comes the Baling of|
|the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must know something of the curious   |
|internal structure of the thing operated upon. Regarding the Sperm Whale's head |
|as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two   |
|quoins,* whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, |
|and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end    |
|forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of  |
|the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two     |
|almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal wall of a|
|thick tendinous substance. Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure|
|nautical mathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a  |
|solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep    |
|inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides. The lower|
|subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the|
|crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic  |
|white fibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may|
|be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous |
|great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale's vast plaited forehead|
|forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his wondrous|
|tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished with the most      |
|excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun of the whale contains |
|by far the most precious of all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized    |
|spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this  |
|precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature. Though in |
|life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it |
|soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when    |
|the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large whale's case      |
|generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable   |
|circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or      |
|is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what you     |
|can. I know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was      |
|coated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not possibly      |
|have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like the lining of a     |
|fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm Whale's case. It will      |
|have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale embraces the entire  |
|length of the entire top of the head; and since--as has been elsewhere set      |
|forth--the head embraces one third of the whole length of the creature, then    |
|setting that length down at eighty feet for a good sized whale, you have more   |
|than twenty-six feet for the depth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up |
|and down against a ship's side. As in decapitating the whale, the operator's    |
|instrument is brought close to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced|
|into the spermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest |
|a careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly let out   |
|its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the head, also, which is |
|at last elevated out of the water, and retained in that position by the enormous|
|cutting tackles, whose hempen combinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness|
|of ropes in that quarter. Thus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that |
|marvellous and--in this particular instance--almost fatal operation whereby     |
|the Sperm Whale's great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped. Nimble as a cat, Tashtego    |
|mounts aloft; and without altering his erect posture, runs straight out upon the|
|overhanging mainyard-arm, to the part where it exactly projects over the hoisted|
|Tun. He has carried with him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only   |
|two parts, travelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so   |
|that it hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it is |
|caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down the other  |
|part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he lands on the summit |
|of the head. There--still high elevated above the rest of the company, to whom  |
|he vivaciously cries--he seems some Turkish Muezzin calling the good people to  |
|prayers from the top of a tower. A short-handled sharp spade being sent up to   |
|him, he diligently searches for the proper place to begin breaking into the     |
|Tun. In this business he proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in     |
|some old house, sounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the |
|time this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like    |
|a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end,   |
|being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands.     |
|These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another     |
|person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket,    |
|Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears;  |
|then giving the word to the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again,      |
|all bubbling like a dairy-maid's pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its   |
|height, the full-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly   |
|emptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through the same |
|round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the end, Tashtego has  |
|to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper and deeper into the Tun,     |
|until some twenty feet of the pole have gone down. Now, the people of the Pequod|
|had been baling some time in this way; several tubs had been filled with the    |
|fragrant sperm; when all at once a queer accident happened. Whether it was that |
|Tashtego, that wild Indian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a     |
|moment his one-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or  |
|whether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or whether the    |
|Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without stating his particular   |
|reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling now; but, on a sudden, as the  |
|eightieth or ninetieth bucket came suckingly up--my God! poor Tashtego--like the|
|twin reciprocating bucket in a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into  |
|this great Tun of Heidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean    |
|out of sight! "Man overboard!" cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation |
|first came to his senses. "Swing the bucket this way!" and putting one foot     |
|into it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip itself,  |
|the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost before Tashtego     |
|could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there was a terrible tumult.  |
|Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving  |
|just below the surface of the sea, as if that moment seized with some momentous |
|idea; whereas it was only the poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those      |
|struggles the perilous depth to which he had sunk. At this instant, while       |
|Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing the whip--which had somehow     |
|got foul of the great cutting tackles--a sharp cracking noise was heard; and    |
|to the unspeakable horror of all, one of the two enormous hooks suspending the  |
|head tore out, and with a vast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till |
|the drunk ship reeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining  |
|hook, upon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be on  |
|the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent motions    |
|of the head. "Come down, come down!" yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one  |
|hand holding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he would |
|still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line, rammed down the |
|bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the buried harpooneer should   |
|grasp it, and so be hoisted out. "In heaven's name, man," cried Stubb, "are     |
|you ramming home a cartridge there?--Avast! How will that help him; jamming     |
|that iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye!" "Stand clear of     |
|the tackle!" cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket. Almost in the same    |
|instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like      |
|Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away |
|from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half|
|swinging--now over the sailors' heads, and now over the water--Daggoo, through  |
|a thick mist of spray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles,      |
|while poor, buried-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the |
|sea! But hardly had the blinding vapour cleared away, when a naked figure with  |
|a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen hovering over the   |
|bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my brave Queequeg had dived to |
|the rescue. One packed rush was made to the side, and every eye counted every   |
|ripple, as moment followed moment, and no sign of either the sinker or the diver|
|could be seen. Some hands now jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little |
|off from the ship. "Ha! ha!" cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet,     |
|swinging perch overhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm   |
|thrust upright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust    |
|forth from the grass over a grave. "Both! both!--it is both!"--cried Daggoo     |
|again with a joyful shout; and soon after, Queequeg was seen boldly striking    |
|out with one hand, and with the other clutching the long hair of the Indian.    |
|Drawn into the waiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego|
|was long in coming to, and Queequeg did not look very brisk. Now, how had this  |
|noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the slowly descending head,   |
|Queequeg with his keen sword had made side lunges near its bottom, so as to     |
|scuttle a large hole there; then dropping his sword, had thrust his long arm    |
|far inwards and upwards, and so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred,   |
|that upon first thrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing     |
|that that was not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;--he had  |
|thrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a somerset  |
|upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in the good old     |
|way--head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was doing as well as     |
|could be expected. And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics  |
|of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully |
|accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless   |
|impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be |
|taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing. I know    |
|that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header's will be sure to seem incredible   |
|to some landsmen, though they themselves may have either seen or heard of some  |
|one's falling into a cistern ashore; an accident which not seldom happens,      |
|and with much less reason too than the Indian's, considering the exceeding      |
|slipperiness of the curb of the Sperm Whale's well. But, peradventure, it may   |
|be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought the tissued, infiltrated head of  |
|the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and most corky part about him; and yet thou   |
|makest it sink in an element of a far greater specific gravity than itself. We  |
|have thee there. Not at all, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in,  |
|the case had been nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but    |
|the dense tendinous wall of the well--a double welded, hammered substance, as   |
|I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of which sinks  |
|in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking in this substance     |
|was in the present instance materially counteracted by the other parts of the   |
|head remaining undetached from it, so that it sank very slowly and deliberately |
|indeed, affording Queequeg a fair chance for performing his agile obstetrics    |
|on the run, as you may say. Yes, it was a running delivery, so it was. Now,     |
|had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious perishing;      |
|smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant spermaceti; coffined,   |
|hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber and sanctum sanctorum of the    |
|whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be recalled--the delicious death of an  |
|Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey in the crotch of a hollow tree, found such |
|exceeding store of it, that leaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that     |
|he died embalmed. How many, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato's honey   |
|head, and sweetly perished there? To scan the lines of his face, or feel the    |
|bumps on the head of this Leviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist     |
|or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost     |
|as hopeful as for Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of       |
|Gibraltar, or for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the |
|Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats of the     |
|various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of horses, birds,  |
|serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the modifications of expression   |
|discernible therein. Nor have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw   |
|out some hints touching the phrenological characteristics of other beings than  |
|man. Therefore, though I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application |
|of these two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all       |
|things; I achieve what I can. Physiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an  |
|anomalous creature. He has no proper nose. And since the nose is the central    |
|and most conspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and    |
|finally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that its entire |
|absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect the countenance of  |
|the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of|
|some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no |
|face can be physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of|
|the nose. Dash the nose from Phidias's marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder! |
|Nevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his proportions are so |
|stately, that the same deficiency which in the sculptured Jove were hideous,    |
|in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is an added grandeur. A nose to the whale  |
|would have been impertinent. As on your physiognomical voyage you sail round    |
|his vast head in your jolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never       |
|insulted by the reflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit,|
|which so often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest     |
|royal beadle on his throne. In some particulars, perhaps the most imposing      |
|physiognomical view to be had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of  |
|his head. This aspect is sublime. In thought, a fine human brow is like the East|
|when troubled with the morning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow   |
|of the bull has a touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain    |
|defiles, the elephant's brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow    |
|is as that great golden seal affixed by the German Emperors to their decrees.   |
|It signifies--"God: done this day by my hand." But in most creatures, nay in    |
|man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip of alpine land lying along |
|the snow line. Few are the foreheads which like Shakespeare's or Melancthon's   |
|rise so high, and descend so low, that the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, |
|tideless mountain lakes; and all above them in the forehead's wrinkles, you     |
|seem to track the antlered thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland  |
|hunters track the snow prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this   |
|high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified,|
|that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread    |
|powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature.       |
|For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no    |
|nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one  |
|broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the   |
|doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow     |
|diminish; though that way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In |
|profile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic depression in the|
|forehead's middle, which, in man, is Lavater's mark of genius. But how? Genius  |
|in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech?   |
|No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it.   |
|It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that    |
|had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have   |
|been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the  |
|Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue,   |
|or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion.       |
|If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their      |
|birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in |
|the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to    |
|Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. Champollion deciphered   |
|the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher     |
|the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other  |
|human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in  |
|thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder  |
|and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful     |
|Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if   |
|you can. If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist   |
|his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square. In    |
|the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in length.  |
|Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side of a      |
|moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in life--as   |
|we have elsewhere seen--this inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost  |
|squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm. At the high  |
|end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under the long |
|floor of this crater--in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length   |
|and as many in depth--reposes the mere handful of this monster's brain. The     |
|brain is at least twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden  |
|away behind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the amplified  |
|fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it secreted in him, that   |
|I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny that the Sperm Whale has any   |
|other brain than that palpable semblance of one formed by the cubic-yards of    |
|his sperm magazine. Lying in strange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their |
|apprehensions, it seems more in keeping with the idea of his general might to   |
|regard that mystic part of him as the seat of his intelligence. It is plain,    |
|then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the creature's        |
|living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain, you can      |
|then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that    |
|are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world. If you unload his skull of  |
|its spermy heaps and then take a rear view of its rear end, which is the high   |
|end, you will be struck by its resemblance to the human skull, beheld in the    |
|same situation, and from the same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed    |
|skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and   |
|you would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions    |
|on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say--This man had  |
|no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations, considered along     |
|with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and power, you can best form   |
|to yourself the truest, though not the most exhilarating conception of what     |
|the most exalted potency is. But if from the comparative dimensions of the      |
|whale's proper brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then   |
|I have another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped's   |
|spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung     |
|necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull     |
|proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped   |
|skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not    |
|the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the   |
|skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying,|
|in a sort of basso-relievo, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider       |
|that the phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not pushing their     |
|investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that |
|much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would      |
|rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine|
|never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm   |
|audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world. Apply this    |
|spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial cavity is continuous|
|with the first neck-vertebra; and in that vertebra the bottom of the spinal     |
|canal will measure ten inches across, being eight in height, and of a triangular|
|figure with the base downwards. As it passes through the remaining vertebrae    |
|the canal tapers in size, but for a considerable distance remains of large      |
|capacity. Now, of course, this canal is filled with much the same strangely     |
|fibrous substance--the spinal cord--as the brain; and directly communicates with|
|the brain. And what is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain's|
|cavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal to that  |
|of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be unreasonable to survey |
|and map out the whale's spine phrenologically? For, viewed in this light, the   |
|wonderful comparative smallness of his brain proper is more than compensated by |
|the wonderful comparative magnitude of his spinal cord. But leaving this hint   |
|to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I would merely assume the spinal   |
|theory for a moment, in reference to the Sperm Whale's hump. This august hump,  |
|if I mistake not, rises over one of the larger vertebrae, and is, therefore,    |
|in some sort, the outer convex mould of it. From its relative situation then,   |
|I should call this high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the    |
|Sperm Whale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have reason|
|to know. The predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,      |
|Derick De Deer, master, of Bremen. At one time the greatest whaling people in   |
|the world, the Dutch and Germans are now among the least; but here and there at |
|very wide intervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with |
|their flag in the Pacific. For some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to  |
|pay her respects. While yet some distance from the Pequod, she rounded to, and  |
|dropping a boat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in   |
|the bows instead of the stern. "What has he in his hand there?" cried Starbuck, |
|pointing to something wavingly held by the German. "Impossible!--a lamp-feeder!"|
|"Not that," said Stubb, "no, no, it's a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he's coming   |
|off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don't you see that big tin can there  |
|alongside of him?--that's his boiling water. Oh! he's all right, is the Yarman."|
|"Go along with you," cried Flask, "it's a lamp-feeder and an oil-can. He's out  |
|of oil, and has come a-begging." However curious it may seem for an oil-ship    |
|to be borrowing oil on the whale-ground, and however much it may invertedly     |
|contradict the old proverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes     |
|such a thing really happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer     |
|did indubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Flask did declare. As he mounted the   |
|deck, Ahab abruptly accosted him, without at all heeding what he had in his     |
|hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced his complete ignorance   |
|of the White Whale; immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder     |
|and oil can, with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock     |
|at night in profound darkness--his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and      |
|not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding by   |
|hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a    |
|CLEAN one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name of Jungfrau or the   |
|Virgin. His necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his    |
|ship's side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the mast-heads  |
|of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that without pausing    |
|to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed round his boat and made    |
|after the leviathan lamp-feeders. Now, the game having risen to leeward, he and |
|the other three German boats that soon followed him, had considerably the start |
|of the Pequod's keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their  |
|danger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight before the wind,  |
|rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in harness. They     |
|left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling a great wide parchment |
|upon the sea. Full in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a     |
|huge, humped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as     |
|by the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed afflicted with   |
|the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this whale belonged to the pod   |
|in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such venerable     |
|leviathans to be at all social. Nevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though    |
|indeed their back water must have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell |
|at his broad muzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile    |
|currents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth with a    |
|choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds, followed by strange   |
|subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to have egress at his other        |
|buried extremity, causing the waters behind him to upbubble. "Who's got some    |
|paregoric?" said Stubb, "he has the stomach-ache, I'm afraid. Lord, think of    |
|having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse winds are holding mad Christmas in |
|him, boys. It's the first foul wind I ever knew to blow from astern; but look,  |
|did ever whale yaw so before? it must be, he's lost his tiller." As an overladen|
|Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck load of frightened horses,|
|careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her way; so did this old whale heave     |
|his aged bulk, and now and then partly turning over on his cumbrous rib-ends,   |
|expose the cause of his devious wake in the unnatural stump of his starboard    |
|fin. Whether he had lost that fin in battle, or had been born without it, it    |
|were hard to say. "Only wait a bit, old chap, and I'll give ye a sling for that |
|wounded arm," cried cruel Flask, pointing to the whale-line near him. "Mind     |
|he don't sling thee with it," cried Starbuck. "Give way, or the German will     |
|have him." With one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this   |
|one fish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most valuable  |
|whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were going with such    |
|great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for the time. At this       |
|juncture the Pequod's keels had shot by the three German boats last lowered; but|
|from the great start he had had, Derick's boat still led the chase, though every|
|moment neared by his foreign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from |
|being already so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron before  |
|they could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he seemed quite     |
|confident that this would be the case, and occasionally with a deriding gesture |
|shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats. "The ungracious and ungrateful dog!"  |
|cried Starbuck; "he mocks and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him  |
|not five minutes ago!"--then in his old intense whisper--"Give way, greyhounds! |
|Dog to it!" "I tell ye what it is, men"--cried Stubb to his crew--"it's against |
|my religion to get mad; but I'd like to eat that villainous Yarman--Pull--won't |
|ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye love brandy? A hogshead of   |
|brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why don't some of ye burst a blood-vessel? |
|Who's that been dropping an anchor overboard--we don't budge an inch--we're     |
|becalmed. Halloo, here's grass growing in the boat's bottom--and by the Lord,   |
|the mast there's budding. This won't do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short   |
|and long of it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?" "Oh! see the suds he makes!" |
|cried Flask, dancing up and down--"What a hump--Oh, DO pile on the beef--lays   |
|like a log! Oh! my lads, DO spring--slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you      |
|know, my lads--baked clams and muffins--oh, DO, DO, spring,--he's a hundred     |
|barreller--don't lose him now--don't oh, DON'T!--see that Yarman--Oh, won't ye  |
|pull for your duff, my lads--such a sog! such a sogger! Don't ye love sperm?    |
|There goes three thousand dollars, men!--a bank!--a whole bank! The bank of     |
|England!--Oh, DO, DO, DO!--What's that Yarman about now?" At this moment Derick |
|was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the advancing boats, and also his |
|oil-can; perhaps with the double view of retarding his rivals' way, and at the  |
|same time economically accelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the     |
|backward toss. "The unmannerly Dutch dogger!" cried Stubb. "Pull now, men, like |
|fifty thousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d'ye say,   |
|Tashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces for the   |
|honour of old Gayhead? What d'ye say?" "I say, pull like god-dam,"--cried the   |
|Indian. Fiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Pequod's  |
|three boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed, momentarily     |
|neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of the headsman when       |
|drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up proudly, occasionally backing|
|the after oarsman with an exhilarating cry of, "There she slides, now! Hurrah   |
|for the white-ash breeze! Down with the Yarman! Sail over him!" But so decided  |
|an original start had Derick had, that spite of all their gallantry, he would   |
|have proved the victor in this race, had not a righteous judgment descended upon|
|him in a crab which caught the blade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy  |
|lubber was striving to free his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick's  |
|boat was nigh to capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty       |
|rage;--that was a good time for Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask. With a shout, they  |
|took a mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German's quarter. |
|An instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the whale's immediate  |
|wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was the foaming swell that he  |
|made. It was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was now  |
|going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual tormented jet;  |
|while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of fright. Now to this hand,   |
|now to that, he yawed in his faltering flight, and still at every billow that   |
|he broke, he spasmodically sank in the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky  |
|his one beating fin. So have I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted  |
|broken circles in the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But   |
|the bird has a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the|
|fear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted in him;   |
|he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his spiracle, and this   |
|made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while still, in his amazing bulk,   |
|portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there was enough to appal the stoutest     |
|man who so pitied. Seeing now that but a very few moments more would give the   |
|Pequod's boats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick|
|chose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long dart, ere the|
|last chance would for ever escape. But no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for|
|the stroke, than all three tigers--Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo--instinctively    |
|sprang to their feet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed    |
|their barbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three     |
|Nantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapours of foam and white-fire!     |
|The three boats, in the first fury of the whale's headlong rush, bumped the     |
|German's aside with such force, that both Derick and his baffled harpooneer     |
|were spilled out, and sailed over by the three flying keels. "Don't be afraid,  |
|my butter-boxes," cried Stubb, casting a passing glance upon them as he shot    |
|by; "ye'll be picked up presently--all right--I saw some sharks astern--St.     |
|Bernard's dogs, you know--relieve distressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the    |
|way to sail now. Every keel a sunbeam! Hurrah!--Here we go like three tin       |
|kettles at the tail of a mad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an    |
|elephant in a tilbury on a plain--makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you    |
|fasten to him that way; and there's danger of being pitched out too, when you   |
|strike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he's going to Davy   |
|Jones--all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this whale carries    |
|the everlasting mail!" But the monster's run was a brief one. Giving a sudden   |
|gasp, he tumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round  |
|the loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them; while so    |
|fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would soon exhaust the    |
|lines, that using all their dexterous might, they caught repeated smoking turns |
|with the rope to hold on; till at last--owing to the perpendicular strain from  |
|the lead-lined chocks of the boats, whence the three ropes went straight down   |
|into the blue--the gunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while  |
|the three sterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound,   |
|for some time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more line,   |
|though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats have been taken     |
|down and lost in this way, yet it is this "holding on," as it is called; this   |
|hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from the back; this it is that  |
|often torments the Leviathan into soon rising again to meet the sharp lance     |
|of his foes. Yet not to speak of the peril of the thing, it is to be doubted    |
|whether this course is always the best; for it is but reasonable to presume,    |
|that the longer the stricken whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. |
|Because, owing to the enormous surface of him--in a full grown sperm whale      |
|something less than 2000 square feet--the pressure of the water is immense. We  |
|all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we ourselves stand up under;    |
|even here, above-ground, in the air; how vast, then, the burden of a whale,     |
|bearing on his back a column of two hundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least  |
|equal the weight of fifty atmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the     |
|weight of twenty line-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and     |
|men on board. As the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing   |
|down into its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any sort,  |
|nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths; what landsman |
|would have thought, that beneath all that silence and placidity, the utmost     |
|monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in agony! Not eight inches of    |
|perpendicular rope were visible at the bows. Seems it credible that by three    |
|such thin threads the great Leviathan was suspended like the big weight to an   |
|eight day clock. Suspended? and to what? To three bits of board. Is this the    |
|creature of whom it was once so triumphantly said--"Canst thou fill his skin    |
|with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at|
|him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as   |
|straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth|
|at the shaking of a spear!" This the creature? this he? Oh! that unfulfilments  |
|should follow the prophets. For with the strength of a thousand thighs in his   |
|tail, Leviathan had run his head under the mountains of the sea, to hide him    |
|from the Pequod's fish-spears! In that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows  |
|that the three boats sent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough  |
|and broad enough to shade half Xerxes' army. Who can tell how appalling to the  |
|wounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head! "Stand  |
|by, men; he stirs," cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly vibrated in the |
|water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by magnetic wires, the life and|
|death throbs of the whale, so that every oarsman felt them in his seat. The next|
|moment, relieved in great part from the downward strain at the bows, the boats  |
|gave a sudden bounce upwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of    |
|white bears are scared from it into the sea. "Haul in! Haul in!" cried Starbuck |
|again; "he's rising." The lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one    |
|hand's breadth could have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back  |
|all dripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two ship's   |
|lengths of the hunters. His motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion.     |
|In most land animals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their   |
|veins, whereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly shut|
|off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose peculiarities it |
|is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the blood-vessels, so that when  |
|pierced even by so small a point as a harpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun  |
|upon his whole arterial system; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary|
|pressure of water at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said   |
|to pour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of blood in  |
|him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that he will keep thus |
|bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even as in a drought a river   |
|will flow, whose source is in the well-springs of far-off and undiscernible     |
|hills. Even now, when the boats pulled upon this whale, and perilously drew over|
|his swaying flukes, and the lances were darted into him, they were followed by  |
|steady jets from the new made wound, which kept continually playing, while the  |
|natural spout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending its|
|affrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet came, because|
|no vital part of him had thus far been struck. His life, as they significantly  |
|call it, was untouched. As the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole |
|upper part of his form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was       |
|plainly revealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were  |
|beheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the noblest oaks |
|when prostrate, so from the points which the whale's eyes had once occupied,    |
|now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none.   |
|For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death |
|and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings      |
|of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional    |
|inoffensiveness by all to all. Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially |
|disclosed a strangely discoloured bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel,  |
|low down on the flank. "A nice spot," cried Flask; "just let me prick him there |
|once." "Avast!" cried Starbuck, "there's no need of that!" But humane Starbuck  |
|was too late. At the instant of the dart an ulcerous jet shot from this cruel   |
|wound, and goaded by it into more than sufferable anguish, the whale now        |
|spouting thick blood, with swift fury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering |
|them and their glorying crews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Flask's  |
|boat and marring the bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent |
|was he by loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had   |
|made; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin, then    |
|over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the white secrets  |
|of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most piteous, that last expiring |
|spout. As when by unseen hands the water is gradually drawn off from some mighty|
|fountain, and with half-stifled melancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and|
|lowers to the ground--so the last long dying spout of the whale. Soon, while    |
|the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body showed symptoms of    |
|sinking with all its treasures unrifled. Immediately, by Starbuck's orders,     |
|lines were secured to it at different points, so that ere long every boat was a |
|buoy; the sunken whale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords.  |
|By very heedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred  |
|to her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffest fluke-chains, for it|
|was plain that unless artificially upheld, the body would at once sink to the   |
|bottom. It so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade,   |
|the entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his flesh, on the |
|lower part of the bunch before described. But as the stumps of harpoons are     |
|frequently found in the dead bodies of captured whales, with the flesh perfectly|
|healed around them, and no prominence of any kind to denote their place;        |
|therefore, there must needs have been some other unknown reason in the present  |
|case fully to account for the ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was |
|the fact of a lance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried   |
|iron, the flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And   |
|when? It might have been darted by some Nor' West Indian long before America was|
|discovered. What other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous   |
|cabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further discoveries,  |
|by the ship's being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways to the sea, owing     |
|to the body's immensely increasing tendency to sink. However, Starbuck, who     |
|had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to the last; hung on to it so        |
|resolutely, indeed, that when at length the ship would have been capsized, if   |
|still persisting in locking arms with the body; then, when the command was given|
|to break clear from it, such was the immovable strain upon the timber-heads     |
|to which the fluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to   |
|cast them off. Meantime everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the    |
|other side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house.    |
|The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks and    |
|cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural dislocation. In vain    |
|handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the immovable fluke-chains, to   |
|pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so low had the whale now settled      |
|that the submerged ends could not be at all approached, while every moment      |
|whole tons of ponderosity seemed added to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed |
|on the point of going over. "Hold on, hold on, won't ye?" cried Stubb to the    |
|body, "don't be in such a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do |
|something or go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes, |
|and run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big chains."   |
|"Knife? Aye, aye," cried Queequeg, and seizing the carpenter's heavy hatchet,   |
|he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing at the largest   |
|fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were given, when the exceeding |
|strain effected the rest. With a terrific snap, every fastening went adrift;    |
|the ship righted, the carcase sank. Now, this occasional inevitable sinking of  |
|the recently killed Sperm Whale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman  |
|yet adequately accounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great |
|buoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the surface. If the|
|only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and broken-hearted creatures, their|
|pads of lard diminished and all their bones heavy and rheumatic; then you might |
|with some reason assert that this sinking is caused by an uncommon specific     |
|gravity in the fish so sinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter  |
|in him. But it is not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling |
|with noble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of life,  |
|with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny, buoyant heroes do    |
|sometimes sink. Be it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to |
|this accident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty    |
|Right Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable in no     |
|small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale; his Venetian   |
|blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this incumbrance the Sperm|
|Whale is wholly free. But there are instances where, after the lapse of many    |
|hours or several days, the sunken whale again rises, more buoyant than in life. |
|But the reason of this is obvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a   |
|prodigious magnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship   |
|could hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings, among the |
|Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of sinking, they fasten     |
|buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when the body has gone down, they    |
|know where to look for it when it shall have ascended again. It was not long    |
|after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from the Pequod's mast-heads,|
|announcing that the Jungfrau was again lowering her boats; though the only      |
|spout in sight was that of a Fin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable |
|whales, because of its incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the          |
|Fin-Back's spout is so similar to the Sperm Whale's, that by unskilful fishermen|
|it is often mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were now  |
|in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all sail, made   |
|after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared far to leeward, still |
|in bold, hopeful chase. Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks,   |
|my friend. There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the  |
|true method. The more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches|
|up to the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its great |
|honourableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many great demi-gods|
|and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other have shed distinction   |
|upon it, I am transported with the reflection that I myself belong, though but  |
|subordinately, to so emblazoned a fraternity. The gallant Perseus, a son of     |
|Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to the eternal honour of our calling be    |
|it said, that the first whale attacked by our brotherhood was not killed with   |
|any sordid intent. Those were the knightly days of our profession, when we only |
|bore arms to succor the distressed, and not to fill men's lamp-feeders. Every   |
|one knows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely Andromeda, the|
|daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast, and as Leviathan was in|
|the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the prince of whalemen, intrepidly   |
|advancing, harpooned the monster, and delivered and married the maid. It was    |
|an admirable artistic exploit, rarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the   |
|present day; inasmuch as this Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And   |
|let no man doubt this Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the |
|Syrian coast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast   |
|skeleton of a whale, which the city's legends and all the inhabitants asserted  |
|to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew. When the Romans     |
|took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in triumph. What seems most  |
|singular and suggestively important in this story, is this: it was from Joppa   |
|that Jonah set sail. Akin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda--indeed,    |
|by some supposed to be indirectly derived from it--is that famous story of St.  |
|George and the Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many|
|old chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and often     |
|stand for each other. "Thou art as a lion of the waters, and as a dragon of the |
|sea," saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in truth, some versions of|
|the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it would much subtract from the glory  |
|of the exploit had St. George but encountered a crawling reptile of the land,   |
|instead of doing battle with the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a  |
|snake, but only a Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to    |
|march boldly up to a whale. Let not the modern paintings of this scene mislead  |
|us; for though the creature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is      |
|vaguely represented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted  |
|on land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance of those|
|times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists; and considering  |
|that as in Perseus' case, St. George's whale might have crawled up out of the   |
|sea on the beach; and considering that the animal ridden by St. George might    |
|have been only a large seal, or sea-horse; bearing all this in mind, it will    |
|not appear altogether incompatible with the sacred legend and the ancientest    |
|draughts of the scene, to hold this so-called dragon no other than the great    |
|Leviathan himself. In fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this   |
|whole story will fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines,  |
|Dagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse's head and |
|both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the stump or fishy part |
|of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble stamp, even a whaleman, is the|
|tutelary guardian of England; and by good rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket   |
|should be enrolled in the most noble order of St. George. And therefore, let    |
|not the knights of that honourable company (none of whom, I venture to say,     |
|have ever had to do with a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a |
|Nantucketer with disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers  |
|we are much better entitled to St. George's decoration than they. Whether       |
|to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long remained dubious:     |
|for though according to the Greek mythologies, that antique Crockett and Kit    |
|Carson--that brawny doer of rejoicing good deeds, was swallowed down and thrown |
|up by a whale; still, whether that strictly makes a whaleman of him, that might |
|be mooted. It nowhere appears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, |
|indeed, from the inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary   |
|whaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I claim him|
|for one of our clan. But, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian   |
|story of Hercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more |
|ancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice versa; certainly they are |
|very similar. If I claim the demigod then, why not the prophet? Nor do heroes,  |
|saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole roll of our order. Our  |
|grand master is still to be named; for like royal kings of old times, we find   |
|the head waters of our fraternity in nothing short of the great gods themselves.|
|That wondrous oriental story is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which     |
|gives us the dread Vishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the      |
|Hindoos; gives us this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;--Vishnoo, who, by   |
|the first of his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified|
|the whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved to      |
|recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave birth to   |
|Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical books, whose      |
|perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo before beginning the   |
|creation, and which therefore must have contained something in the shape of     |
|practical hints to young architects, these Vedas were lying at the bottom of the|
|waters; so Vishnoo became incarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the |
|uttermost depths, rescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman,  |
|then? even as a man who rides a horse is called a horseman? Perseus, St. George,|
|Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there's a member-roll for you! What club but      |
|the whaleman's can head off like that? Reference was made to the historical     |
|story of Jonah and the whale in the preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers    |
|rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there    |
|were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox      |
|pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and |
|Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make     |
|those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that. One old Sag-Harbor      |
|whaleman's chief reason for questioning the Hebrew story was this:--He had one  |
|of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles, embellished with curious, unscientific    |
|plates; one of which represented Jonah's whale with two spouts in his head--a   |
|peculiarity only true with respect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right     |
|Whale, and the varieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have    |
|this saying, "A penny roll would choke him"; his swallow is so very small.      |
|But, to this, Bishop Jebb's anticipative answer is ready. It is not necessary,  |
|hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the whale's belly, but as |
|temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And this seems reasonable enough  |
|in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right Whale's mouth would accommodate a      |
|couple of whist-tables, and comfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too,    |
|Jonah might have ensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts,  |
|the Right Whale is toothless. Another reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that  |
|name) urged for his want of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something  |
|obscurely in reference to his incarcerated body and the whale's gastric juices. |
|But this objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist     |
|supposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a DEAD       |
|whale--even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned their dead    |
|horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has been divined by other |
|continental commentators, that when Jonah was thrown overboard from the Joppa   |
|ship, he straightway effected his escape to another vessel near by, some vessel |
|with a whale for a figure-head; and, I would add, possibly called "The Whale,"  |
|as some craft are nowadays christened the "Shark," the "Gull," the "Eagle."     |
|Nor have there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the whale   |
|mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver--an inflated bag   |
|of wind--which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was saved from a watery   |
|doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all round. But he had still     |
|another reason for his want of faith. It was this, if I remember right: Jonah   |
|was swallowed by the whale in the Mediterranean Sea, and after three days he    |
|was vomited up somewhere within three days' journey of Nineveh, a city on the   |
|Tigris, very much more than three days' journey across from the nearest point   |
|of the Mediterranean coast. How is that? But was there no other way for the     |
|whale to land the prophet within that short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might  |
|have carried him round by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak    |
|of the passage through the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another       |
|passage up the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the   |
|complete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of the      |
|Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any whale to     |
|swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah's weathering the Cape of Good Hope at so   |
|early a day would wrest the honour of the discovery of that great headland from |
|Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and so make modern history a liar. But|
|all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his foolish pride    |
|of reason--a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing that he had but      |
|little learning except what he had picked up from the sun and the sea. I say    |
|it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and abominable, devilish rebellion    |
|against the reverend clergy. For by a Portuguese Catholic priest, this very     |
|idea of Jonah's going to Nineveh via the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a    |
|signal magnification of the general miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this    |
|day, the highly enlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story      |
|of Jonah. And some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris's    |
|Voyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honour of Jonah, in which Mosque   |
|was a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil. To make them run easily and   |
|swiftly, the axles of carriages are anointed; and for much the same purpose,    |
|some whalers perform an analogous operation upon their boat; they grease the    |
|bottom. Nor is it to be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may |
|possibly be of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are    |
|hostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to make    |
|the boat slide bravely. Queequeg believed strongly in anointing his boat, and   |
|one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau disappeared, took more than |
|customary pains in that occupation; crawling under its bottom, where it hung    |
|over the side, and rubbing in the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to  |
|insure a crop of hair from the craft's bald keel. He seemed to be working in    |
|obedience to some particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the |
|event. Towards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to  |
|them, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered flight, as of  |
|Cleopatra's barges from Actium. Nevertheless, the boats pursued, and Stubb's    |
|was foremost. By great exertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one     |
|iron; but the stricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his      |
|horizontal flight, with added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the |
|planted iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became imperative   |
|to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose him. But to haul the boat up   |
|to his flank was impossible, he swam so fast and furious. What then remained?   |
|Of all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and countless |
|subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced, none exceed that  |
|fine manoeuvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small sword, or broad sword,  |
|in all its exercises boasts nothing like it. It is only indispensable with an   |
|inveterate running whale; its grand fact and feature is the wonderful distance  |
|to which the long lance is accurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking  |
|boat, under extreme headway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some  |
|ten or twelve feet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of the       |
|harpoon, and also of a lighter material--pine. It is furnished with a small     |
|rope called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be hauled back to   |
|the hand after darting. But before going further, it is important to mention    |
|here, that though the harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, |
|yet it is seldom done; and when done, is still less frequently successful, on   |
|account of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as compared    |
|with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. As a general thing,   |
|therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before any pitchpoling comes     |
|into play. Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness  |
|and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in   |
|pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the flying     |
|boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet ahead. Handling the  |
|long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along its length to see if it be   |
|exactly straight, Stubb whistlingly gathers up the coil of the warp in one hand,|
|so as to secure its free end in his grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then  |
|holding the lance full before his waistband's middle, he levels it at the whale;|
|when, covering him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand,     |
|thereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon his     |
|palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler, balancing a  |
|long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless impulse, in a superb |
|lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming distance, and quivers in the life |
|spot of the whale. Instead of sparkling water, he now spouts red blood. "That   |
|drove the spigot out of him!" cried Stubb. "'Tis July's immortal Fourth; all    |
|fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old Orleans whiskey, or old   |
|Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then, Tashtego, lad, I'd have ye hold a   |
|canakin to the jet, and we'd drink round it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd    |
|brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live     |
|punch-bowl quaff the living stuff." Again and again to such gamesome talk, the  |
|dexterous dart is repeated, the spear returning to its master like a greyhound  |
|held in skilful leash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line    |
|is slackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and mutely   |
|watches the monster die. That for six thousand years--and no one knows how many |
|millions of ages before--the great whales should have been spouting all over    |
|the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many |
|sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of   |
|hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these     |
|sprinklings and spoutings--that all this should be, and yet, that down to this  |
|blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this     |
|sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether|
|these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour--this is    |
|surely a noteworthy thing. Let us, then, look at this matter, along with some   |
|interesting items contingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of   |
|their gills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times is  |
|combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a cod might   |
|live a century, and never once raise its head above the surface. But owing      |
|to his marked internal structure which gives him regular lungs, like a human    |
|being's, the whale can only live by inhaling the disengaged air in the open     |
|atmosphere. Wherefore the necessity for his periodical visits to the upper      |
|world. But he cannot in any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his       |
|ordinary attitude, the Sperm Whale's mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath|
|the surface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no connexion with his     |
|mouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the top of his|
|head. If I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function indispensable |
|to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a certain element, which     |
|being subsequently brought into contact with the blood imparts to the blood its |
|vivifying principle, I do not think I shall err; though I may possibly use some |
|superfluous scientific words. Assume it, and it follows that if all the blood   |
|in a man could be aerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils   |
|and not fetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he would then    |
|live without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the case    |
|with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals, his full hour and more  |
|(when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath, or so much as in any      |
|way inhaling a particle of air; for, remember, he has no gills. How is this?    |
|Between his ribs and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable |
|involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he    |
|quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for  |
|an hour or more, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of   |
|vitality in him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert carries a      |
|surplus supply of drink for future use in its four supplementary stomachs. The  |
|anatomical fact of this labyrinth is indisputable; and that the supposition     |
|founded upon it is reasonable and true, seems the more cogent to me, when I     |
|consider the otherwise inexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in HAVING HIS   |
|SPOUTINGS OUT, as the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested,  |
|upon rising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period    |
|of time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he stays     |
|eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths;      |
|then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over  |
|again, to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few breaths you alarm him, so    |
|that he sounds, he will be always dodging up again to make good his regular     |
|allowance of air. And not till those seventy breaths are told, will he finally  |
|go down to stay out his full term below. Remark, however, that in different     |
|individuals these rates are different; but in any one they are alike. Now, why  |
|should the whale thus insist upon having his spoutings out, unless it be to     |
|replenish his reservoir of air, ere descending for good? How obvious is it,     |
|too, that this necessity for the whale's rising exposes him to all the fatal    |
|hazards of the chase. For not by hook or by net could this vast leviathan be    |
|caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the sunlight. Not so much thy   |
|skill, then, O hunter, as the great necessities that strike the victory to thee!|
|In man, breathing is incessantly going on--one breath only serving for two or   |
|three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to attend to, waking   |
|or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the Sperm Whale only breathes |
|about one seventh or Sunday of his time. It has been said that the whale only   |
|breathes through his spout-hole; if it could truthfully be added that his spouts|
|are mixed with water, then I opine we should be furnished with the reason why   |
|his sense of smell seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that  |
|at all answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so clogged   |
|with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power of smelling.      |
|But owing to the mystery of the spout--whether it be water or whether it be     |
|vapour--no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at on this head. Sure it is,|
|nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what does he  |
|want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea. Furthermore, as|
|his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting canal, and as that long |
|canal--like the grand Erie Canal--is furnished with a sort of locks (that open  |
|and shut) for the downward retention of air or the upward exclusion of water,   |
|therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he |
|so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the   |
|whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to|
|this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.  |
|Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener! Now, the spouting canal |
|of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for|
|several feet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his    |
|head, and a little to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe |
|laid down in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether   |
|this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout of the    |
|Sperm Whale is the mere vapour of the exhaled breath, or whether that exhaled   |
|breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and discharged through the    |
|spiracle. It is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting|
|canal; but it cannot be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water|
|through the spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem    |
|to be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's    |
|food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would.    |
|Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time him with your watch, you will |
|find that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods of |
|his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration. But why pester one with all   |
|this reasoning on the subject? Speak out! You have seen him spout; then declare |
|what the spout is; can you not tell water from air? My dear sir, in this world  |
|it is not so easy to settle these plain things. I have ever found your plain    |
|things the knottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand|
|in it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely. The central body of it  |
|is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping it; and how can you certainly  |
|tell whether any water falls from it, when, always, when you are close enough   |
|to a whale to get a close view of his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion,   |
|the water cascading all around him. And if at such times you should think that  |
|you really perceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know that they  |
|are not merely condensed from its vapour; or how do you know that they are not  |
|those identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole fissure, which     |
|is countersunk into the summit of the whale's head? For even when tranquilly    |
|swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with his elevated hump sun-dried as |
|a dromedary's in the desert; even then, the whale always carries a small basin  |
|of water on his head, as under a blazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity    |
|in a rock filled up with rain. Nor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be    |
|over curious touching the precise nature of the whale spout. It will not do     |
|for him to be peering into it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with   |
|your pitcher to this fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when     |
|coming into slight contact with the outer, vapoury shreds of the jet, which     |
|will often happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of the   |
|thing so touching it. And I know one, who coming into still closer contact with |
|the spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or otherwise, I cannot  |
|say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm. Wherefore, among whalemen, the |
|spout is deemed poisonous; they try to evade it. Another thing; I have heard    |
|it said, and I do not much doubt it, that if the jet is fairly spouted into     |
|your eyes, it will blind you. The wisest thing the investigator can do then,    |
|it seems to me, is to let this deadly spout alone. Still, we can hypothesize,   |
|even if we cannot prove and establish. My hypothesis is this: that the spout is |
|nothing but mist. And besides other reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled,  |
|by considerations touching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm|
|Whale; I account him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed  |
|fact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other whales      |
|sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am convinced that from  |
|the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil,   |
|Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam,   |
|while in the act of thinking deep thoughts. While composing a little treatise   |
|on Eternity, I had the curiosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw  |
|reflected there, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere    |
|over my head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep thought,|
|after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an August noon; this    |
|seems an additional argument for the above supposition. And how nobly it raises |
|our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through|
|a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapour,        |
|engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapour--as you will   |
|sometimes see it--glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal  |
|upon his thoughts. For, d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only|
|irradiate vapour. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my   |
|mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly   |
|ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or    |
|denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly,    |
|and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer |
|nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye. Other poets  |
|have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope, and the lovely plumage|
|of the bird that never alights; less celestial, I celebrate a tail. Reckoning   |
|the largest sized Sperm Whale's tail to begin at that point of the trunk where  |
|it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises upon its upper surface      |
|alone, an area of at least fifty square feet. The compact round body of its root|
|expands into two broad, firm, flat palms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to  |
|less than an inch in thickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly|
|overlap, then sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy|
|between. In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely defined    |
|than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost expansion in the  |
|full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed twenty feet across. The     |
|entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it, and   |
|you find that three distinct strata compose it:--upper, middle, and lower. The  |
|fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those of the     |
|middle one, very short, and running crosswise between the outside layers. This  |
|triune structure, as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail. To the   |
|student of old Roman walls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to |
|the thin course of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful   |
|relics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the great    |
|strength of the masonry. But as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail  |
|were not enough, the whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and   |
|woof of muscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins   |
|and running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and largely       |
|contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent measureless force  |
|of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point. Could annihilation occur to   |
|matter, this were the thing to do it. Nor does this--its amazing strength, at   |
|all tend to cripple the graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness    |
|of ease undulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions   |
|derive their most appalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty  |
|or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful,    |
|strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied tendons that all     |
|over seem bursting from the marble in the carved Hercules, and its charm would  |
|be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the linen sheet from the naked corpse of     |
|Goethe, he was overwhelmed with the massive chest of the man, that seemed as a  |
|Roman triumphal arch. When Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark|
|what robustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in    |
|the Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which his idea |
|has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so destitute as they are   |
|of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but the mere negative, feminine   |
|one of submission and endurance, which on all hands it is conceded, form the    |
|peculiar practical virtues of his teachings. Such is the subtle elasticity      |
|of the organ I treat of, that whether wielded in sport, or in earnest, or in    |
|anger, whatever be the mood it be in, its flexions are invariably marked by     |
|exceeding grace. Therein no fairy's arm can transcend it. Five great motions    |
|are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for progression; Second, when     |
|used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping; Fourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in  |
|peaking flukes. First: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan's tail   |
|acts in a different manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never  |
|wriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the whale, his |
|tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled forwards beneath the   |
|body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is this which gives that singular   |
|darting, leaping motion to the monster when furiously swimming. His side-fins   |
|only serve to steer by. Second: It is a little significant, that while one sperm|
|whale only fights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless,      |
|in his conflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In      |
|striking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the blow is  |
|only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed air, especially |
|if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then simply irresistible. No ribs of   |
|man or boat can withstand it. Your only salvation lies in eluding it; but if    |
|it comes sideways through the opposing water, then partly owing to the light    |
|buoyancy of the whale boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib  |
|or a dashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the most   |
|serious result. These submerged side blows are so often received in the fishery,|
|that they are accounted mere child's play. Some one strips off a frock, and the |
|hole is stopped. Third: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the|
|whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect there |
|is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the elephant's trunk.    |
|This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of sweeping, when in maidenly    |
|gentleness the whale with a certain soft slowness moves his immense flukes      |
|from side to side upon the surface of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor's    |
|whisker, woe to that sailor, whiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that |
|preliminary touch! Had this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway     |
|bethink me of Darmonodes' elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and    |
|with low salutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their     |
|zones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not possess  |
|this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet another elephant,   |
|that when wounded in the fight, curved round his trunk and extracted the dart.  |
|Fourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the middle  |
|of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence of his dignity,  |
|and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see|
|his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the    |
|air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles.    |
|You would almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the  |
|light wreath of vapour from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think|
|that that was the smoke from the touch-hole. Fifth: As in the ordinary floating |
|posture of the leviathan the flukes lie considerably below the level of his     |
|back, they are then completely out of sight beneath the surface; but when he is |
|about to plunge into the deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of  |
|his body are tossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till    |
|they downwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime BREACH--somewhere else  |
|to be described--this peaking of the whale's flukes is perhaps the grandest     |
|sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless profundities     |
|the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the highest heaven. So in    |
|dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting forth his tormented colossal claw  |
|from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all   |
|what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in    |
|that of Isaiah, the archangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during     |
|a sunrise that crimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in      |
|the east, all heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert    |
|with peaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment     |
|of adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of the      |
|fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African elephant, I    |
|then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most devout of all beings.     |
|For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity often hailed    |
|the morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence. The chance   |
|comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the elephant, so far as some  |
|aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk of the other are concerned, should |
|not tend to place those two opposite organs on an equality, much less the       |
|creatures to which they respectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is   |
|but a terrier to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan's tail, his trunk is    |
|but the stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant's trunk were   |
|as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and crash of   |
|the sperm whale's ponderous flukes, which in repeated instances have one after  |
|the other hurled entire boats with all their oars and crews into the air, very  |
|much as an Indian juggler tosses his balls. Though all comparison in the way of |
|general bulk between the whale and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in |
|that particular the elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that  |
|a dog does to the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points     |
|of curious similitude; among these is the spout. It is well known that the      |
|elephant will often draw up water or dust in his trunk, and then elevating it,  |
|jet it forth in a stream. The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I   |
|deplore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which,   |
|though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an |
|extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I  |
|have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; |
|that the whale, indeed, by these methods intelligently conversed with the world.|
|Nor are there wanting other motions of the whale in his general body, full of   |
|strangeness, and unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him   |
|how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I   |
|know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how   |
|comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my    |
|tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely   |
|make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he   |
|has no face. The long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward |
|from the territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia.     |
|In a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of Sumatra,   |
|Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a vast mole, or rampart,  |
|lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia, and dividing the long unbroken Indian|
|ocean from the thickly studded oriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced  |
|by several sally-ports for the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous     |
|among which are the straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda,      |
|chiefly, vessels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.      |
|Those narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing midway in  |
|that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green promontory, known   |
|to seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond to the central gateway     |
|opening into some vast walled empire: and considering the inexhaustible wealth  |
|of spices, and silks, and jewels, and gold, and ivory, with which the thousand  |
|islands of that oriental sea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of  |
|nature, that such treasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least |
|bear the appearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping|
|western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those     |
|domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the      |
|Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the  |
|obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships     |
|before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed     |
|between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes   |
|of the east. But while they freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by     |
|no means renounce their claim to more solid tribute. Time out of mind the       |
|piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded coves and islets    |
|of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits,      |
|fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. Though by the repeated |
|bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of European cruisers, the  |
|audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at    |
|the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which,   |
|in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged. With a fair,     |
|fresh wind, the Pequod was now drawing nigh to these straits; Ahab purposing    |
|to pass through them into the Javan sea, and thence, cruising northwards, over  |
|waters known to be frequented here and there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore  |
|by the Philippine Islands, and gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the     |
|great whaling season there. By these means, the circumnavigating Pequod would   |
|sweep almost all the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous  |
|to descending upon the Line in the Pacific; where Ahab, though everywhere else  |
|foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Moby Dick, in the   |
|sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he might most reasonably|
|be presumed to be haunting it. But how now? in this zoned quest, does Ahab      |
|touch no land? does his crew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay.    |
|For a long time, now, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring,   |
|and needs no sustenance but what's in himself. So Ahab. Mark this, too, in the  |
|whaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be transferred   |
|to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries no cargo but herself |
|and crew, their weapons and their wants. She has a whole lake's contents        |
|bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether      |
|with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She carries years' water in her. Clear    |
|old prime Nantucket water; which, when three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in  |
|the Pacific, prefers to drink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted   |
|off in casks, from the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while     |
|other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a |
|score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one  |
|grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves. |
|So that did you carry them the news that another flood had come; they would     |
|only answer--"Well, boys, here's the ark!" Now, as many Sperm Whales had been   |
|captured off the western coast of Java, in the near vicinity of the Straits     |
|of Sunda; indeed, as most of the ground, roundabout, was generally recognised   |
|by the fishermen as an excellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Pequod    |
|gained more and more upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and  |
|admonished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of the land    |
|soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the fresh cinnamon|
|was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was descried. Almost renouncing all|
|thought of falling in with any game hereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered  |
|the straits, when the customary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long |
|a spectacle of singular magnificence saluted us. But here be it premised, that  |
|owing to the unwearied activity with which of late they have been hunted over   |
|all four oceans, the Sperm Whales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small|
|detached companies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in extensive|
|herds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost seem as   |
|if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and covenant for mutual     |
|assistance and protection. To this aggregation of the Sperm Whale into such     |
|immense caravans, may be imputed the circumstance that even in the best cruising|
|grounds, you may now sometimes sail for weeks and months together, without being|
|greeted by a single spout; and then be suddenly saluted by what sometimes seems |
|thousands on thousands. Broad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three|
|miles, and forming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, |
|a continuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the noon-day  |
|air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right Whale, which,     |
|dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the cleft drooping boughs of a |
|willow, the single forward-slanting spout of the Sperm Whale presents a thick   |
|curled bush of white mist, continually rising and falling away to leeward. Seen |
|from the Pequod's deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of the sea,      |
|this host of vapoury spouts, individually curling up into the air, and beheld   |
|through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze, showed like the thousand cheerful |
|chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried of a balmy autumnal morning, by     |
|some horseman on a height. As marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile  |
|in the mountains, accelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous  |
|passage in their rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the    |
|plain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward through  |
|the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their semicircle, and swimming  |
|on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre. Crowding all sail the Pequod     |
|pressed after them; the harpooneers handling their weapons, and loudly cheering |
|from the heads of their yet suspended boats. If the wind only held, little      |
|doubt had they, that chased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would |
|only deploy into the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their |
|number. And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Moby Dick      |
|himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped white-elephant in|
|the coronation procession of the Siamese! So with stun-sail piled on stun-sail, |
|we sailed along, driving these leviathans before us; when, of a sudden, the     |
|voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly directing attention to something in our     |
|wake. Corresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our rear.  |
|It seemed formed of detached white vapours, rising and falling something like   |
|the spouts of the whales; only they did not so completely come and go; for they |
|constantly hovered, without finally disappearing. Levelling his glass at this   |
|sight, Ahab quickly revolved in his pivot-hole, crying, "Aloft there, and rig   |
|whips and buckets to wet the sails;--Malays, sir, and after us!" As if too long |
|lurking behind the headlands, till the Pequod should fairly have entered the    |
|straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in hot pursuit, to make up for their  |
|over-cautious delay. But when the swift Pequod, with a fresh leading wind, was  |
|herself in hot chase; how very kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist    |
|in speeding her on to her own chosen pursuit,--mere riding-whips and rowels     |
|to her, that they were. As with glass under arm, Ahab to-and-fro paced the      |
|deck; in his forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after    |
|one the bloodthirsty pirates chasing him; some such fancy as the above seemed   |
|his. And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery defile in which the |
|ship was then sailing, and bethought him that through that gate lay the route   |
|to his vengeance, and beheld, how that through that same gate he was now both   |
|chasing and being chased to his deadly end; and not only that, but a herd of    |
|remorseless wild pirates and inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering|
|him on with their curses;--when all these conceits had passed through his brain,|
|Ahab's brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand beach after some     |
|stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able to drag the firm thing from |
|its place. But thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and  |
|when, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the Pequod at    |
|last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra side, emerging at    |
|last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the harpooneers seemed more to grieve  |
|that the swift whales had been gaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the  |
|ship had so victoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the    |
|wake of the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the    |
|ship neared them; and the wind now dying away, word was passed to spring to the |
|boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed wonderful instinct of the   |
|Sperm Whale, become notified of the three keels that were after them,--though   |
|as yet a mile in their rear,--than they rallied again, and forming in close     |
|ranks and battalions, so that their spouts all looked like flashing lines of    |
|stacked bayonets, moved on with redoubled velocity. Stripped to our shirts and  |
|drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and after several hours' pulling were      |
|almost disposed to renounce the chase, when a general pausing commotion among   |
|the whales gave animating token that they were now at last under the influence  |
|of that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen     |
|perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied. The compact martial columns   |
|in which they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swimming, were now broken  |
|up in one measureless rout; and like King Porus' elephants in the Indian battle |
|with Alexander, they seemed going mad with consternation. In all directions     |
|expanding in vast irregular circles, and aimlessly swimming hither and thither, |
|by their short thick spoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of      |
|panic. This was still more strangely evinced by those of their number, who,     |
|completely paralysed as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled|
|ships on the sea. Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple sheep,        |
|pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not possibly have   |
|evinced such excessive dismay. But this occasional timidity is characteristic   |
|of almost all herding creatures. Though banding together in tens of thousands,  |
|the lion-maned buffaloes of the West have fled before a solitary horseman.      |
|Witness, too, all human beings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a  |
|theatre's pit, they will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter   |
|for the outlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each   |
|other to death. Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at the strangely gallied|
|whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not |
|infinitely outdone by the madness of men. Though many of the whales, as has     |
|been said, were in violent motion, yet it is to be observed that as a whole the |
|herd neither advanced nor retreated, but collectively remained in one place. As |
|is customary in those cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some  |
|one lone whale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes' time,     |
|Queequeg's harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted blinding spray in our    |
|faces, and then running away with us like light, steered straight for the heart |
|of the herd. Though such a movement on the part of the whale struck under such  |
|circumstances, is in no wise unprecedented; and indeed is almost always more    |
|or less anticipated; yet does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes  |
|of the fishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the   |
|frantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a delirious  |
|throb. As, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of   |
|speed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we thus     |
|tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by the crazed    |
|creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was like a ship mobbed by |
|ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer through their complicated channels|
|and straits, knowing not at what moment it may be locked in and crushed. But    |
|not a bit daunted, Queequeg steered us manfully; now sheering off from this     |
|monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away from that, whose  |
|colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the time, Starbuck stood up  |
|in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of our way whatever whales he could    |
|reach by short darts, for there was no time to make long ones. Nor were the     |
|oarsmen quite idle, though their wonted duty was now altogether dispensed with. |
|They chiefly attended to the shouting part of the business. "Out of the way,    |
|Commodore!" cried one, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the |
|surface, and for an instant threatened to swamp us. "Hard down with your tail,  |
|there!" cried a second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed calmly   |
|cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity. All whaleboats carry certain   |
|curious contrivances, originally invented by the Nantucket Indians, called      |
|druggs. Two thick squares of wood of equal size are stoutly clenched together,  |
|so that they cross each other's grain at right angles; a line of considerable   |
|length is then attached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the   |
|line being looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is chiefly   |
|among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more whales are close   |
|round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But sperm whales are not     |
|every day encountered; while you may, then, you must kill all you can. And      |
|if you cannot kill them all at once, you must wing them, so that they can be    |
|afterwards killed at your leisure. Hence it is, that at times like these the    |
|drugg, comes into requisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them. The   |
|first and second were successfully darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly   |
|running off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of the towing drugg.  |
|They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. But upon flinging   |
|the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy wooden block, it caught   |
|under one of the seats of the boat, and in an instant tore it out and carried   |
|it away, dropping the oarsman in the boat's bottom as the seat slid from under  |
|him. On both sides the sea came in at the wounded planks, but we stuffed two    |
|or three drawers and shirts in, and so stopped the leaks for the time. It had   |
|been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were it not that as we  |
|advanced into the herd, our whale's way greatly diminished; moreover, that as we|
|went still further and further from the circumference of commotion, the direful |
|disorders seemed waning. So that when at last the jerking harpoon drew out,     |
|and the towing whale sideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his    |
|parting momentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the  |
|shoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene valley lake.  |
|Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost whales, were heard   |
|but not felt. In this central expanse the sea presented that smooth satin-like  |
|surface, called a sleek, produced by the subtle moisture thrown off by the whale|
|in his more quiet moods. Yes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say |
|lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance we  |
|beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of  |
|whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied    |
|spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic  |
|circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones, and so have gone    |
|round on their backs. Owing to the density of the crowd of reposing whales,     |
|more immediately surrounding the embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance   |
|of escape was at present afforded us. We must watch for a breach in the living  |
|wall that hemmed us in; the wall that had only admitted us in order to shut us  |
|up. Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally visited by small    |
|tame cows and calves; the women and children of this routed host. Now, inclusive|
|of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving outer circles, and       |
|inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in any one of those circles,   |
|the entire area at this juncture, embraced by the whole multitude, must have    |
|contained at least two or three square miles. At any rate--though indeed such a |
|test at such a time might be deceptive--spoutings might be discovered from our  |
|low boat that seemed playing up almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention   |
|this circumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had been purposely locked |
|up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of the herd had hitherto   |
|prevented them from learning the precise cause of its stopping; or, possibly,   |
|being so young, unsophisticated, and every way innocent and inexperienced;      |
|however it may have been, these smaller whales--now and then visiting our       |
|becalmed boat from the margin of the lake--evinced a wondrous fearlessness and  |
|confidence, or else a still becharmed panic which it was impossible not to      |
|marvel at. Like household dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to our    |
|gunwales, and touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly |
|domesticated them. Queequeg patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched their    |
|backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the time refrained   |
|from darting it. But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another  |
|and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended |
|in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, |
|and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The    |
|lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent;    |
|and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from      |
|the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet        |
|drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly   |
|reminiscence;--even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards    |
|us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. |
|Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these|
|little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might   |
|have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was  |
|a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that   |
|irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where,     |
|tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent    |
|like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still |
|freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived |
|from foreign parts. "Line! line!" cried Queequeg, looking over the gunwale; "him|
|fast! him fast!--Who line him! Who struck?--Two whale; one big, one little!"    |
|"What ails ye, man?" cried Starbuck. "Look-e here," said Queequeg, pointing     |
|down. As when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds of  |
|fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and shows the     |
|slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling towards the air; so now, |
|Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord of Madame Leviathan, by which the |
|young cub seemed still tethered to its dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes|
|of the chase, this natural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled |
|with the hempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest   |
|secrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We saw young  |
|Leviathan amours in the deep. The sperm whale, as with all other species of the |
|Leviathan, but unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons;     |
|after a gestation which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but  |
|one at a time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and   |
|Jacob:--a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated,|
|one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from    |
|that. When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are cut by the     |
|hunter's lance, the mother's pouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the   |
|sea for rods. The milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it    |
|might do well with strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the       |
|whales salute MORE HOMINUM. And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle   |
|of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre  |
|freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely       |
|revelled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of  |
|my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while  |
|ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland   |
|there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy. Meanwhile, as we thus lay    |
|entranced, the occasional sudden frantic spectacles in the distance evinced     |
|the activity of the other boats, still engaged in drugging the whales on the    |
|frontier of the host; or possibly carrying on the war within the first circle,  |
|where abundance of room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But    |
|the sight of the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro |
|across the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is sometimes   |
|the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful and alert, to seek  |
|to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or maiming his gigantic tail-tendon. |
|It is done by darting a short-handled cutting-spade, to which is attached a     |
|rope for hauling it back again. A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in   |
|this part, but not effectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat,    |
|carrying along with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony|
|of the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone      |
|mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he|
|went. But agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling spectacle  |
|enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed to inspire the    |
|rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first the intervening distance  |
|obscured from us. But at length we perceived that by one of the unimaginable    |
|accidents of the fishery, this whale had become entangled in the harpoon-line   |
|that he towed; he had also run away with the cutting-spade in him; and while    |
|the free end of the rope attached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the |
|coils of the harpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked   |
|loose from his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churning through |
|the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail, and tossing the keen      |
|spade about him, wounding and murdering his own comrades. This terrific object  |
|seemed to recall the whole herd from their stationary fright. First, the whales |
|forming the margin of our lake began to crowd a little, and tumble against      |
|each other, as if lifted by half spent billows from afar; then the lake itself  |
|began faintly to heave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries   |
|vanished; in more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central    |
|circles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was departing. |
|A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the tumultuous masses of   |
|block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in Spring, the entire host of   |
|whales came tumbling upon their inner centre, as if to pile themselves up in    |
|one common mountain. Instantly Starbuck and Queequeg changed places; Starbuck   |
|taking the stern. "Oars! Oars!" he intensely whispered, seizing the helm--"gripe|
|your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off,    |
|you Queequeg--the whale there!--prick him!--hit him! Stand up--stand up, and    |
|stay so! Spring, men--pull, men; never mind their backs--scrape them!--scrape   |
|away!" The boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a  |
|narrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate endeavor we at  |
|last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way rapidly, and at the same    |
|time earnestly watching for another outlet. After many similar hair-breadth     |
|escapes, we at last swiftly glided into what had just been one of the outer     |
|circles, but now crossed by random whales, all violently making for one centre. |
|This lucky salvation was cheaply purchased by the loss of Queequeg's hat, who,  |
|while standing in the bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken      |
|clean from his head by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of     |
|broad flukes close by. Riotous and disordered as the universal commotion now    |
|was, it soon resolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having |
|clumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their onward      |
|flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless; but the boats     |
|still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged whales might be dropped    |
|astern, and likewise to secure one which Flask had killed and waifed. The waif  |
|is a pennoned pole, two or three of which are carried by every boat; and which, |
|when additional game is at hand, are inserted upright into the floating body    |
|of a dead whale, both to mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior  |
|possession, should the boats of any other ship draw near. The result of this    |
|lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious saying in the Fishery,--the|
|more whales the less fish. Of all the drugged whales only one was captured. The |
|rest contrived to escape for the time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter  |
|be seen, by some other craft than the Pequod. The previous chapter gave account |
|of an immense body or herd of Sperm Whales, and there was also then given the   |
|probable cause inducing those vast aggregations. Now, though such great bodies  |
|are at times encountered, yet, as must have been seen, even at the present day, |
|small detached bands are occasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty  |
|individuals each. Such bands are known as schools. They generally are of two    |
|sorts; those composed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but  |
|young vigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated. In cavalier  |
|attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a male of full grown  |
|magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling   |
|in the rear and covering the flight of his ladies. In truth, this gentleman     |
|is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about over the watery world, surroundingly     |
|accompanied by all the solaces and endearments of the harem. The contrast       |
|between this Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is       |
|always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, |
|are not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are      |
|comparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen yards    |
|round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the whole they    |
|are hereditarily entitled to EMBONPOINT. It is very curious to watch this harem |
|and its lord in their indolent ramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever  |
|on the move in leisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time   |
|for the full flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned,     |
|perhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating summer  |
|of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have lounged up and    |
|down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for the Oriental waters    |
|in anticipation of the cool season there, and so evade the other excessive      |
|temperature of the year. When serenely advancing on one of these journeys,      |
|if any strange suspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on    |
|his interesting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming    |
|that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what  |
|prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away! High times, indeed,|
|if unprincipled young rakes like him are to be permitted to invade the sanctity |
|of domestic bliss; though do what the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most      |
|notorious Lothario out of his bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore,|
|the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just |
|so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love.      |
|They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so  |
|striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers.   |
|Not a few are captured having the deep scars of these encounters,--furrowed     |
|heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some instances, wrenched and        |
|dislocated mouths. But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself|
|away at the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to watch  |
|that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there |
|awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomon     |
|devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines. Granting other whales to be |
|in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for |
|these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness|
|is small. As for the sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and     |
|daughters must take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help.  |
|For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord    |
|Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so, being   |
|a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every     |
|baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines;    |
|as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short,   |
|as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and        |
|virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent,    |
|repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown   |
|to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and   |
|parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous |
|errors. Now, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so     |
|is the lord and master of that school technically known as the schoolmaster.    |
|It is therefore not in strict character, however admirably satirical, that      |
|after going to school himself, he should then go abroad inculcating not what    |
|he learned there, but the folly of it. His title, schoolmaster, would very      |
|naturally seem derived from the name bestowed upon the harem itself, but some   |
|have surmised that the man who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale,  |
|must have read the memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a       |
|country-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and what was|
|the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of his pupils. The   |
|same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale betakes himself |
|in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm Whales. Almost universally,   |
|a lone whale--as a solitary Leviathan is called--proves an ancient one. Like    |
|venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature    |
|herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of  |
|wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets. The schools composing none|
|but young and vigorous males, previously mentioned, offer a strong contrast     |
|to the harem schools. For while those female whales are characteristically      |
|timid, the young males, or forty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far    |
|the most pugnacious of all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to   |
|encounter; excepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes     |
|met, and these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.     |
|The Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a mob of  |
|young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness, tumbling round   |
|the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no prudent underwriter      |
|would insure them any more than he would a riotous lad at Yale or Harvard. They |
|soon relinquish this turbulence though, and when about three-fourths grown,     |
|break up, and separately go about in quest of settlements, that is, harems.     |
|Another point of difference between the male and female schools is still more   |
|characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a Forty-barrel-bull--poor devil!    |
|all his comrades quit him. But strike a member of the harem school, and her     |
|companions swim around her with every token of concern, sometimes lingering so  |
|near her and so long, as themselves to fall a prey. The allusion to the waif    |
|and waif-poles in the last chapter but one, necessitates some account of the    |
|laws and regulations of the whale fishery, of which the waif may be deemed      |
|the grand symbol and badge. It frequently happens that when several ships are   |
|cruising in company, a whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and      |
|be finally killed and captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly     |
|comprised many minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature.    |
|For example,--after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale, the body |
|may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm; and drifting far      |
|away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a calm, snugly tows it  |
|alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the most vexatious and violent    |
|disputes would often arise between the fishermen, were there not some written or|
|unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases. Perhaps the only  |
|formal whaling code authorized by legislative enactment, was that of Holland. It|
|was decreed by the States-General in A.D. 1695. But though no other nation has  |
|ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own|
|legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for   |
|terse comprehensiveness surpasses Justinian's Pandects and the By-laws of the   |
|Chinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People's Business.   |
|Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne's forthing, or the barb of a  |
|harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they. I. A Fast-Fish belongs to  |
|the party fast to it. II. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest |
|catch it. But what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable  |
|brevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to expound it.  |
|First: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast, when it   |
|is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at all controllable   |
|by the occupant or occupants,--a mast, an oar, a nine-inch cable, a telegraph   |
|wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the same. Likewise a fish is technically |
|fast when it bears a waif, or any other recognised symbol of possession; so     |
|long as the party waifing it plainly evince their ability at any time to        |
|take it alongside, as well as their intention so to do. These are scientific    |
|commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist |
|in hard words and harder knocks--the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True,     |
|among the more upright and honourable whalemen allowances are always made for   |
|peculiar cases, where it would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party   |
|to claim possession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party.    |
|But others are by no means so scrupulous. Some fifty years ago there was a      |
|curious case of whale-trover litigated in England, wherein the plaintiffs set   |
|forth that after a hard chase of a whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed  |
|they (the plaintiffs) had succeeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last,  |
|through peril of their lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but      |
|their boat itself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship) came    |
|up with the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it before   |
|the very eyes of the plaintiffs. And when those defendants were remonstrated    |
|with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs' teeth, and assured   |
|them that by way of doxology to the deed he had done, he would now retain their |
|line, harpoons, and boat, which had remained attached to the whale at the time  |
|of the seizure. Wherefore the plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the       |
|value of their whale, line, harpoons, and boat. Mr. Erskine was counsel for     |
|the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was the judge. In the course of the defence,  |
|the witty Erskine went on to illustrate his position, by alluding to a recent   |
|crim. con. case, wherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife's |
|viciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in the course |
|of years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action to recover possession |
|of her. Erskine was on the other side; and he then supported it by saying, that |
|though the gentleman had originally harpooned the lady, and had once had her    |
|fast, and only by reason of the great stress of her plunging viciousness, had   |
|at last abandoned her; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; |
|and therefore when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then became|
|that subsequent gentleman's property, along with whatever harpoon might have    |
|been found sticking in her. Now in the present case Erskine contended that the  |
|examples of the whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.|
|These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very learned  |
|Judge in set terms decided, to wit,--That as for the boat, he awarded it to     |
|the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives; but   |
|that with regard to the controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged   |
|to the defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the    |
|final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off with    |
|them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody    |
|who afterwards took the fish had a right to them. Now the defendants afterwards |
|took the fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs. A common man looking   |
|at this decision of the very learned Judge, might possibly object to it. But    |
|ploughed up to the primary rock of the matter, the two great principles laid    |
|down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, and applied and elucidated by  |
|Lord Ellenborough in the above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish    |
|and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all    |
|human jurisprudence; for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of sculpture,  |
|the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines, has but two props    |
|to stand on. Is it not a saying in every one's mouth, Possession is half of     |
|the law: that is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But often   |
|possession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of Russian    |
|serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is the whole      |
|of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last mite but a       |
|Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villain's marble mansion with a door-plate |
|for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount which    |
|Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to      |
|keep Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a    |
|Fast-Fish? What is the Archbishop of Savesoul's income of L100,000 seized from  |
|the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers   |
|(all sure of heaven without any of Savesoul's help) what is that globular       |
|L100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and    |
|hamlets but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor    |
|Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan, is   |
|Texas but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of |
|the law? But if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the   |
|kindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is internationally |
|and universally applicable. What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which |
|Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master  |
|and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India  |
|to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.   |
|What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What  |
|all men's minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious |
|belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists  |
|are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but |
|a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?  |
|"De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam." BRACTON, L.   |
|3, C. 3. Latin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with    |
|the context, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of      |
|that land, the King, as Honourary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and     |
|the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division which, in the     |
|whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder. Now   |
|as this law, under a modified form, is to this day in force in England; and as  |
|it offers in various respects a strange anomaly touching the general law of     |
|Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in a separate chapter, on the same   |
|courteous principle that prompts the English railways to be at the expense of   |
|a separate car, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the     |
|first place, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still |
|in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within the   |
|last two years. It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or    |
|some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and   |
|beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from the      |
|shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the jurisdiction     |
|of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden. Holding the office      |
|directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the    |
|Cinque Port territories become by assignment his. By some writers this office   |
|is called a sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily employed    |
|at times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that    |
|same fobbing of them. Now when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and  |
|with their trowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their |
|fat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good L150 from the precious oil   |
|and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good ale with   |
|their cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up steps a very    |
|learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone  |
|under his arm; and laying it upon the whale's head, he says--"Hands off! this   |
|fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden's." Upon this   |
|the poor mariners in their respectful consternation--so truly English--knowing  |
|not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile |
|ruefully glancing from the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend   |
|the matter, or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman with the   |
|copy of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long scratching about for his  |
|ideas, made bold to speak, "Please, sir, who is the Lord Warden?" "The Duke."   |
|"But the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?" "It is his." "We have   |
|been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is all that to go to    |
|the Duke's benefit; we getting nothing at all for our pains but our blisters?"  |
|"It is his." "Is the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode   |
|of getting a livelihood?" "It is his." "I thought to relieve my old bed-ridden  |
|mother by part of my share of this whale." "It is his." "Won't the Duke be      |
|content with a quarter or a half?" "It is his." In a word, the whale was seized |
|and sold, and his Grace the Duke of Wellington received the money. Thinking that|
|viewed in some particular lights, the case might by a bare possibility in some  |
|small degree be deemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest   |
|clergyman of the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to|
|take the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To which my|
|Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published) that he had already|
|done so, and received the money, and would be obliged to the reverend gentleman |
|if for the future he (the reverend gentleman) would decline meddling with other |
|people's business. Is this the still militant old man, standing at the corners  |
|of the three kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars? It will readily   |
|be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to the whale was a      |
|delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire then on what principle  |
|the Sovereign is originally invested with that right. The law itself has already|
|been set forth. But Plowdon gives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale |
|so caught belongs to the King and Queen, "because of its superior excellence."  |
|And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in   |
|such matters. But why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A  |
|reason for that, ye lawyers! In his treatise on "Queen-Gold," or Queen-pinmoney,|
|an old King's Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: "Ye tail is   |
|ye Queen's, that ye Queen's wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone." Now    |
|this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right |
|whale was largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the     |
|tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer like     |
|Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail? An allegorical |
|meaning may lurk here. There are two royal fish so styled by the English        |
|law writers--the whale and the sturgeon; both royal property under certain      |
|limitations, and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown's ordinary   |
|revenue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by      |
|inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as   |
|the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that|
|fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously grounded upon    |
|some presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a reason in all things, even in|
|law. "In vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan,   |
|insufferable fetor denying not inquiry." SIR T. BROWNE, V.E. It was a week or   |
|two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when we were slowly sailing     |
|over a sleepy, vapoury, mid-day sea, that the many noses on the Pequod's deck   |
|proved more vigilant discoverers than the three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar |
|and not very pleasant smell was smelt in the sea. "I will bet something now,"   |
|said Stubb, "that somewhere hereabouts are some of those drugged whales we      |
|tickled the other day. I thought they would keel up before long." Presently,    |
|the vapours in advance slid aside; and there in the distance lay a ship, whose  |
|furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must be alongside. As we glided  |
|nearer, the stranger showed French colours from his peak; and by the eddying    |
|cloud of vulture sea-fowl that circled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it |
|was plain that the whale alongside must be what the fishermen call a blasted    |
|whale, that is, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an  |
|unappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor such a   |
|mass must exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague, when the living    |
|are incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable indeed is it regarded by   |
|some, that no cupidity could persuade them to moor alongside of it. Yet are     |
|there those who will still do it; notwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained|
|from such subjects is of a very inferior quality, and by no means of the nature |
|of attar-of-rose. Coming still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that     |
|the Frenchman had a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even   |
|more of a nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of those    |
|problematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of prodigious      |
|dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies almost entirely bankrupt|
|of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the proper place we shall see that no    |
|knowing fisherman will ever turn up his nose at such a whale as this, however   |
|much he may shun blasted whales in general. The Pequod had now swept so nigh to |
|the stranger, that Stubb vowed he recognised his cutting spade-pole entangled   |
|in the lines that were knotted round the tail of one of these whales. "There's  |
|a pretty fellow, now," he banteringly laughed, standing in the ship's bows,     |
|"there's a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes of Frenchmen are      |
|but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering their boats for breakers,    |
|mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes, and sometimes sailing from their    |
|port with their hold full of boxes of tallow candles, and cases of snuffers,    |
|foreseeing that all the oil they will get won't be enough to dip the Captain's  |
|wick into; aye, we all know these things; but look ye, here's a Crappo that is  |
|content with our leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content |
|too with scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there. Poor  |
|devil! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let's make him a present of a     |
|little oil for dear charity's sake. For what oil he'll get from that drugged    |
|whale there, wouldn't be fit to burn in a jail; no, not in a condemned cell.    |
|And as for the other whale, why, I'll agree to get more oil by chopping up and  |
|trying out these three masts of ours, than he'll get from that bundle of bones; |
|though, now that I think of it, it may contain something worth a good deal more |
|than oil; yes, ambergris. I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It's |
|worth trying. Yes, I'm for it;" and so saying he started for the quarter-deck.  |
|By this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that whether or no,   |
|the Pequod was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with no hope of escaping      |
|except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the cabin, Stubb now called       |
|his boat's crew, and pulled off for the stranger. Drawing across her bow, he    |
|perceived that in accordance with the fanciful French taste, the upper part of  |
|her stem-piece was carved in the likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted |
|green, and for thorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there; the  |
|whole terminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour. Upon her |
|head boards, in large gilt letters, he read "Bouton de Rose,"--Rose-button,     |
|or Rose-bud; and this was the romantic name of this aromatic ship. Though       |
|Stubb did not understand the BOUTON part of the inscription, yet the word       |
|ROSE, and the bulbous figure-head put together, sufficiently explained the      |
|whole to him. "A wooden rose-bud, eh?" he cried with his hand to his nose,      |
|"that will do very well; but how like all creation it smells!" Now in order to  |
|hold direct communication with the people on deck, he had to pull round the     |
|bows to the starboard side, and thus come close to the blasted whale; and so    |
|talk over it. Arrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he    |
|bawled--"Bouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that speak  |
|English?" "Yes," rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to   |
|be the chief-mate. "Well, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White  |
|Whale?" "WHAT whale?" "The WHITE Whale--a Sperm Whale--Moby Dick, have ye seen  |
|him? "Never heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale--no." "Very    |
|good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute." Then rapidly pulling|
|back towards the Pequod, and seeing Ahab leaning over the quarter-deck rail     |
|awaiting his report, he moulded his two hands into a trumpet and shouted--"No,  |
|Sir! No!" Upon which Ahab retired, and Stubb returned to the Frenchman. He now  |
|perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the chains, and was      |
|using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of bag. "What's the matter  |
|with your nose, there?" said Stubb. "Broke it?" "I wish it was broken, or that  |
|I didn't have any nose at all!" answered the Guernsey-man, who did not seem to  |
|relish the job he was at very much. "But what are you holding YOURS for?" "Oh,  |
|nothing! It's a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain't it? Air rather  |
|gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will ye, Bouton-de-Rose?"   |
|"What in the devil's name do you want here?" roared the Guernseyman, flying into|
|a sudden passion. "Oh! keep cool--cool? yes, that's the word! why don't you pack|
|those whales in ice while you're working at 'em? But joking aside, though; do   |
|you know, Rose-bud, that it's all nonsense trying to get any oil out of such    |
|whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn't a gill in his whole carcase."|
|"I know that well enough; but, d'ye see, the Captain here won't believe it; this|
|is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But come aboard, and |
|mayhap he'll believe you, if he won't me; and so I'll get out of this dirty     |
|scrape." "Anything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow," rejoined Stubb, |
|and with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene presented itself.|
|The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were getting the heavy tackles   |
|in readiness for the whales. But they worked rather slow and talked very fast,  |
|and seemed in anything but a good humor. All their noses upwardly projected     |
|from their faces like so many jib-booms. Now and then pairs of them would drop  |
|their work, and run up to the mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking    |
|they would catch the plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it |
|to their nostrils. Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short   |
|off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly   |
|filled their olfactories. Stubb was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas|
|proceeding from the Captain's round-house abaft; and looking in that direction  |
|saw a fiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from within.  |
|This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain remonstrating against the    |
|proceedings of the day, had betaken himself to the Captain's round-house        |
|(CABINET he called it) to avoid the pest; but still, could not help yelling out |
|his entreaties and indignations at times. Marking all this, Stubb argued well   |
|for his scheme, and turning to the Guernsey-man had a little chat with him,     |
|during which the stranger mate expressed his detestation of his Captain as a    |
|conceited ignoramus, who had brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable |
|a pickle. Sounding him carefully, Stubb further perceived that the Guernsey-man |
|had not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore held     |
|his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and confidential with     |
|him, so that the two quickly concocted a little plan for both circumventing     |
|and satirizing the Captain, without his at all dreaming of distrusting their    |
|sincerity. According to this little plan of theirs, the Guernsey-man, under     |
|cover of an interpreter's office, was to tell the Captain what he pleased, but  |
|as coming from Stubb; and as for Stubb, he was to utter any nonsense that should|
|come uppermost in him during the interview. By this time their destined victim  |
|appeared from his cabin. He was a small and dark, but rather delicate looking   |
|man for a sea-captain, with large whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a   |
|red cotton velvet vest with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Stubb   |
|was now politely introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put |
|on the aspect of interpreting between them. "What shall I say to him first?"    |
|said he. "Why," said Stubb, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, "you|
|may as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me, though  |
|I don't pretend to be a judge." "He says, Monsieur," said the Guernsey-man, in  |
|French, turning to his captain, "that only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel,   |
|whose captain and chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught  |
|from a blasted whale they had brought alongside." Upon this the captain started,|
|and eagerly desired to know more. "What now?" said the Guernsey-man to Stubb.   |
|"Why, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him carefully,   |
|I'm quite certain that he's no more fit to command a whale-ship than a St.      |
|Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he's a baboon." "He vows and declares,   |
|Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one, is far more deadly than the      |
|blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures us, as we value our lives, to cut   |
|loose from these fish." Instantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice  |
|commanded his crew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast|
|loose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship. "What now?" said  |
|the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned to them. "Why, let me see; yes, |
|you may as well tell him now that--that--in fact, tell him I've diddled him,    |
|and (aside to himself) perhaps somebody else." "He says, Monsieur, that he's    |
|very happy to have been of any service to us." Hearing this, the captain vowed  |
|that they were the grateful parties (meaning himself and mate) and concluded by |
|inviting Stubb down into his cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux. "He wants you |
|to take a glass of wine with him," said the interpreter. "Thank him heartily;   |
|but tell him it's against my principles to drink with the man I've diddled. In  |
|fact, tell him I must go." "He says, Monsieur, that his principles won't admit  |
|of his drinking; but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then  |
|Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales,|
|for it's so calm they won't drift." By this time Stubb was over the side, and   |
|getting into his boat, hailed the Guernsey-man to this effect,--that having a   |
|long tow-line in his boat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling   |
|out the lighter whale of the two from the ship's side. While the Frenchman's    |
|boats, then, were engaged in towing the ship one way, Stubb benevolently towed  |
|away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously slacking out a most unusually   |
|long tow-line. Presently a breeze sprang up; Stubb feigned to cast off from the |
|whale; hoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while the |
|Pequod slid in between him and Stubb's whale. Whereupon Stubb quickly pulled to |
|the floating body, and hailing the Pequod to give notice of his intentions, at  |
|once proceeded to reap the fruit of his unrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp  |
|boat-spade, he commenced an excavation in the body, a little behind the side    |
|fin. You would almost have thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea;    |
|and when at length his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning |
|up old Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat's crew were |
|all in high excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking as anxious as  |
|gold-hunters. And all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and   |
|screaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Stubb was beginning to look   |
|disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased, when suddenly from  |
|out the very heart of this plague, there stole a faint stream of perfume, which |
|flowed through the tide of bad smells without being absorbed by it, as one river|
|will flow into and then along with another, without at all blending with it for |
|a time. "I have it, I have it," cried Stubb, with delight, striking something in|
|the subterranean regions, "a purse! a purse!" Dropping his spade, he thrust both|
|hands in, and drew out handfuls of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap,|
|or rich mottled old cheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily   |
|dent it with your thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this,|
|good friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any druggist. Some  |
|six handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably lost in the sea, and still |
|more, perhaps, might have been secured were it not for impatient Ahab's loud    |
|command to Stubb to desist, and come on board, else the ship would bid them     |
|good bye. Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as   |
|an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin    |
|was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For    |
|at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of  |
|ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word|
|ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances     |
|are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also  |
|dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon   |
|the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance,    |
|used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, |
|waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery,   |
|in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in   |
|cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense     |
|is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into   |
|claret, to flavor it. Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen|
|should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of      |
|a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause,     |
|and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a     |
|dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads |
|of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in     |
|blasting rocks. I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris,|
|certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors'|
|trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than |
|pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner. Now that the incorruption  |
|of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is  |
|this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about     |
|corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in   |
|glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is     |
|that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things  |
|of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the     |
|worst. I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, |
|owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and which, in|
|the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly  |
|substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere    |
|in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation   |
|of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another    |
|thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this    |
|odious stigma originate? I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first     |
|arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago.  |
|Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea   |
|as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in     |
|small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home  |
|in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden   |
|and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The  |
|consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these    |
|whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar|
|to that arising from excavating an old city grave-yard, for the foundations of  |
|a Lying-in-Hospital. I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against     |
|whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in  |
|former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which     |
|latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on |
|Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to  |
|put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber    |
|of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland   |
|for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds;  |
|and when the works were in full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant |
|savor. But all this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in  |
|a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil,     |
|does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in    |
|the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that    |
|living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means    |
|creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of the     |
|middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed    |
|can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing,    |
|he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors;  |
|though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm   |
|Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady     |
|rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale     |
|to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous      |
|elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of    |
|an Indian town to do honour to Alexander the Great? It was but some few days    |
|after encountering the Frenchman, that a most significant event befell the      |
|most insignificant of the Pequod's crew; an event most lamentable; and which    |
|ended in providing the sometimes madly merry and predestinated craft with a     |
|living and ever accompanying prophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove  |
|her own. Now, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats.    |
|Some few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is to work   |
|the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general thing, these    |
|ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising the boats' crews. But   |
|if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy, or timorous wight in the ship, |
|that wight is certain to be made a ship-keeper. It was so in the Pequod with the|
|little negro Pippin by nick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard  |
|of him before; ye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so    |
|gloomy-jolly. In outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony|
|and a white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven in  |
|one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull and torpid   |
|in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at bottom very bright,  |
|with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness peculiar to his tribe; a tribe,    |
|which ever enjoy all holidays and festivities with finer, freer relish than any |
|other race. For blacks, the year's calendar should show naught but three hundred|
|and sixty-five Fourth of Julys and New Year's Days. Nor smile so, while I write |
|that this little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy;    |
|behold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king's cabinets. But Pip loved life,     |
|and all life's peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in     |
|which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his |
|brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued |
|in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires,  |
|that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in  |
|his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's|
|frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned |
|the round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the clear air  |
|of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will|
|healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in    |
|its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights |
|it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery   |
|effulgences, infernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest|
|symbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from the King   |
|of Hell. But let us to the story. It came to pass, that in the ambergris affair |
|Stubb's after-oarsman chanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become    |
|quite maimed; and, temporarily, Pip was put into his place. The first time Stubb|
|lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness; but happily, for that time,     |
|escaped close contact with the whale; and therefore came off not altogether     |
|discreditably; though Stubb observing him, took care, afterwards, to exhort him |
|to cherish his courageousness to the utmost, for he might often find it needful.|
|Now upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as the fish  |
|received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which happened, in this    |
|instance, to be right under poor Pip's seat. The involuntary consternation of   |
|the moment caused him to leap, paddle in hand, out of the boat; and in such a   |
|way, that part of the slack whale line coming against his chest, he breasted it |
|overboard with him, so as to become entangled in it, when at last plumping into |
|the water. That instant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line    |
|swiftly straightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks    |
|of the boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken several   |
|turns around his chest and neck. Tashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the |
|fire of the hunt. He hated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its|
|sheath, he suspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Stubb,   |
|exclaimed interrogatively, "Cut?" Meantime Pip's blue, choked face plainly      |
|looked, Do, for God's sake! All passed in a flash. In less than half a minute,  |
|this entire thing happened. "Damn him, cut!" roared Stubb; and so the whale was |
|lost and Pip was saved. So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro  |
|was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these|
|irregular cursings to evaporate, Stubb then in a plain, business-like, but      |
|still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done, unofficially  |
|gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never jump from a boat,      |
|Pip, except--but all the rest was indefinite, as the soundest advice ever is.   |
|Now, in general, STICK TO THE BOAT, is your true motto in whaling; but cases    |
|will sometimes happen when LEAP FROM THE BOAT, is still better. Moreover, as    |
|if perceiving at last that if he should give undiluted conscientious advice to  |
|Pip, he would be leaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Stubb |
|suddenly dropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, "Stick to |
|the boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won't pick you up if you jump; mind that. We   |
|can't afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would sell for thirty  |
|times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in mind, and don't jump any    |
|more." Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow,|
|yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with    |
|his benevolence. But we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. |
|It was under very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this time |
|he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started to run, Pip   |
|was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller's trunk. Alas! Stubb was   |
|but too true to his word. It was a beautiful, bounteous, blue day; the spangled |
|sea calm and cool, and flatly stretching away, all round, to the horizon, like  |
|gold-beater's skin hammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that   |
|sea, Pip's ebon head showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when|
|he fell so rapidly astern. Stubb's inexorable back was turned upon him; and the |
|whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between |
|Pip and Stubb. Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp,       |
|curling, black head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest    |
|and the brightest. Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy   |
|to the practised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful  |
|lonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of |
|such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a|
|dead calm bathe in the open sea--mark how closely they hug their ship and only  |
|coast along her sides. But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to  |
|his fate? No; he did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his |
|wake, and he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very  |
|quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen   |
|jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested by the hunters |
|in all similar instances; and such instances not unfrequently occur; almost     |
|invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the same ruthless|
|detestation peculiar to military navies and armies. But it so happened, that    |
|those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying whales close to them on one    |
|side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb's boat was now so far away, and he and  |
|all his crew so intent upon his fish, that Pip's ringed horizon began to expand |
|around him miserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued      |
|him; but from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such,    |
|at least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but  |
|drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried  |
|down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal      |
|world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom,  |
|revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile      |
|eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out |
|of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon     |
|the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him   |
|mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, |
|man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and    |
|frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.     |
|For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. The thing is common in that fishery;  |
|and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what like abandonment  |
|befell myself. That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to  |
|the Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations previously   |
|detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of the Heidelburgh    |
|Tun, or Case. While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were       |
|employed in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm;    |
|and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated ere |
|going to the try-works, of which anon. It had cooled and crystallized to such a |
|degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's |
|bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling   |
|about in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into  |
|fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this sperm was    |
|such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener!   |
|such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes,  |
|my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralise.  |
|As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion  |
|at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail,       |
|and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle    |
|globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly   |
|broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes  |
|their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,--literally and truly,    |
|like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as|
|in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible  |
|sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old   |
|Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of    |
|anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or   |
|petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever. Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all    |
|the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I  |
|squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found   |
|myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands |
|for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving      |
|feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their|
|hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,--Oh!    |
|my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or   |
|know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round;     |
|nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves     |
|universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness. Would that I could keep   |
|squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated       |
|experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or   |
|at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in  |
|the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the |
|saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am     |
|ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw |
|long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.    |
|Now, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things akin to   |
|it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-works. First comes |
|white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish,   |
|and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed    |
|tendons--a wad of muscle--but still contains some oil. After being severed      |
|from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going    |
|to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble. Plum-pudding is  |
|the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here     |
|and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a      |
|considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is a most refreshing, convivial,    |
|beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of an exceedingly rich,  |
|mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of   |
|the deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron.   |
|Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that    |
|once I stole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should     |
|conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted,      |
|supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and   |
|that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of   |
|the vineyards of Champagne. There is another substance, and a very singular     |
|one, which turns up in the course of this business, but which I feel it to be   |
|very puzzling adequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation  |
|original with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance. It is   |
|an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the tubs of sperm,  |
|after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I hold it to be the      |
|wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case, coalescing. Gurry, so called,  |
|is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but sometimes incidentally      |
|used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the dark, glutinous substance which  |
|is scraped off the back of the Greenland or right whale, and much of which      |
|covers the decks of those inferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.       |
|Nippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale's vocabulary. But    |
|as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman's nipper is a short firm      |
|strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering part of Leviathan's tail: it     |
|averages an inch in thickness, and for the rest, is about the size of the iron  |
|part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along the oily deck, it operates like a leathern  |
|squilgee; and by nameless blandishments, as of magic, allures along with it     |
|all impurities. But to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way   |
|is at once to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its      |
|inmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for the     |
|blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the proper time    |
|arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a scene of terror to all |
|tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by a dull lantern, a space has been|
|left clear for the workmen. They generally go in pairs,--a pike-and-gaffman and |
|a spade-man. The whaling-pike is similar to a frigate's boarding-weapon of the  |
|same name. The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the gaffman   |
|hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from slipping, as the    |
|ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the spade-man stands on the sheet    |
|itself, perpendicularly chopping it into the portable horse-pieces. This spade  |
|is sharp as hone can make it; the spademan's feet are shoeless; the thing he    |
|stands on will sometimes irresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he |
|cuts off one of his own toes, or one of his assistants', would you be very much |
|astonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men. Had you stepped on  |
|board the Pequod at a certain juncture of this post-mortemizing of the whale;   |
|and had you strolled forward nigh the windlass, pretty sure am I that you would |
|have scanned with no small curiosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which  |
|you would have seen there, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the  |
|wondrous cistern in the whale's huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower|
|jaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so surprise   |
|you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,--longer than a Kentuckian is |
|tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and jet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol|
|of Queequeg. And an idol, indeed, it is; or, rather, in old times, its likeness |
|was. Such an idol as that found in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; |
|and for worshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed     |
|the idol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly set    |
|forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of Kings. Look at the sailor,       |
|called the mincer, who now comes along, and assisted by two allies, heavily     |
|backs the grandissimus, as the mariners call it, and with bowed shoulders,      |
|staggers off with it as if he were a grenadier carrying a dead comrade from the |
|field. Extending it upon the forecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically     |
|to remove its dark pelt, as an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he   |
|turns the pelt inside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching,    |
|so as almost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in the  |
|rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some three feet of   |
|it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two slits for arm-holes at  |
|the other end, he lengthwise slips himself bodily into it. The mincer now stands|
|before you invested in the full canonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all    |
|his order, this investiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed   |
|in the peculiar functions of his office. That office consists in mincing the    |
|horse-pieces of blubber for the pots; an operation which is conducted at a      |
|curious wooden horse, planted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious|
|tub beneath it, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a    |
|rapt orator's desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit;    |
|intent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a lad for a |
|Pope were this mincer! Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry   |
|from the mates to the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work    |
|into as thin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of boiling|
|out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably increased,       |
|besides perhaps improving it in quality. Besides her hoisted boats, an American |
|whaler is outwardly distinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious    |
|anomaly of the most solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the |
|completed ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were transported   |
|to her planks. The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the |
|most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength,    |
|fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, some  |
|ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The foundation does not penetrate |
|the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured to the surface by ponderous knees   |
|of iron bracing it on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the    |
|flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping,|
|battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in     |
|number, and each of several barrels' capacity. When not in use, they are kept   |
|remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand, till they|
|shine within like silver punch-bowls. During the night-watches some cynical old |
|sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. While    |
|employed in polishing them--one man in each pot, side by side--many confidential|
|communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for       |
|profound mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod,|
|with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first indirectly    |
|struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the    |
|cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from any point in precisely     |
|the same time. Removing the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the     |
|bare masonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of the  |
|furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted with heavy doors|
|of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented from communicating itself to |
|the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir extending under the entire inclosed   |
|surface of the works. By a tunnel inserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept  |
|replenished with water as fast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys;|
|they open direct from the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment. It   |
|was about nine o'clock at night that the Pequod's try-works were first started  |
|on this present voyage. It belonged to Stubb to oversee the business. "All ready|
|there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the works." This was an   |
|easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting his shavings into the furnace  |
|throughout the passage. Here be it said that in a whaling voyage the first fire |
|in the try-works has to be fed for a time with wood. After that no wood is      |
|used, except as a means of quick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after  |
|being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters,  |
|still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed     |
|the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope,   |
|once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would  |
|that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale |
|it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has    |
|an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity    |
|of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it      |
|is an argument for the pit. By midnight the works were in full operation. We    |
|were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the   |
|wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce  |
|flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated   |
|every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship |
|drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch  |
|and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their   |
|midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the      |
|Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations. The hatch, removed from    |
|the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on  |
|this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's|
|stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the|
|scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted,   |
|curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in   |
|sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil,  |
|which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the  |
|works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This    |
|served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed,     |
|looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their   |
|heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted|
|beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were  |
|strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated|
|to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words      |
|of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the    |
|flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly  |
|gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on,  |
|and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her|
|red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and   |
|scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her    |
|on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with   |
|fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed|
|the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul. So seemed it to    |
|me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently guided the way of this  |
|fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that interval, in darkness myself, I but the |
|better saw the redness, the madness, the ghastliness of others. The continual   |
|sight of the fiend shapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire,   |
|these at last begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to  |
|that unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a midnight helm. |
|But that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable) thing    |
|occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was horribly conscious  |
|of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller smote my side, which leaned     |
|against it; in my ears was the low hum of sails, just beginning to shake in the |
|wind; I thought my eyes were open; I was half conscious of putting my fingers   |
|to the lids and mechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite    |
|of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed     |
|but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp    |
|illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and then made    |
|ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression, that whatever      |
|swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to any haven ahead as     |
|rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered feeling, as of death, came  |
|over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the tiller, but with the crazy conceit   |
|that the tiller was, somehow, in some enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is  |
|the matter with me? thought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, |
|and was fronting the ship's stern, with my back to her prow and the compass.    |
|In an instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying up   |
|into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how grateful the   |
|relief from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and the fatal contingency|
|of being brought by the lee! Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man!  |
|Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept |
|the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when    |
|its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the   |
|skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the   |
|morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden,    |
|glad sun, the only true lamp--all others but liars! Nevertheless the sun hides  |
|not Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nor Rome's accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor |
|all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun    |
|hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two     |
|thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than  |
|sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true--not true, or undeveloped. With   |
|books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest    |
|of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of       |
|woe. "All is vanity." ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian   |
|Solomon's wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast     |
|crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper,   |
|Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free|
|lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly;--not that     |
|man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould        |
|with unfathomably wondrous Solomon. But even Solomon, he says, "the man that    |
|wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain" (I.E., even while       |
|living) "in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire,  |
|lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom  |
|that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle  |
|in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out   |
|of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for      |
|ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in    |
|his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the   |
|plain, even though they soar. Had you descended from the Pequod's try-works to  |
|the Pequod's forecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single |
|moment you would have almost thought you were standing in some illuminated      |
|shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay in their triangular   |
|oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a score of lamps flashing upon |
|his hooded eyes. In merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk|
|of queens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in darkness   |
|to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he seeks the food of |
|light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an Aladdin's lamp, and lays him |
|down in it; so that in the pitchiest night the ship's black hull still houses   |
|an illumination. See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful    |
|of lamps--often but old bottles and vials, though--to the copper cooler at the  |
|try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He burns, too,  |
|the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore, unvitiated state; a   |
|fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral contrivances ashore. It is sweet as    |
|early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of |
|its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up    |
|his own supper of game. Already has it been related how the great leviathan is  |
|afar off descried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors,   |
|and slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed alongside and  |
|beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the headsman of old to the   |
|garments in which the beheaded was killed) his great padded surtout becomes the |
|property of his executioner; how, in due time, he is condemned to the pots,     |
|and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass   |
|unscathed through the fire;--but now it remains to conclude the last chapter    |
|of this part of the description by rehearsing--singing, if I may--the romantic  |
|proceeding of decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into  |
|the hold, where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities, sliding|
|along beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to rise and blow.    |
|While still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the six-barrel      |
|casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling this way and that in|
|the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed round and headed over, end for  |
|end, and sometimes perilously scoot across the slippery deck, like so many land |
|slides, till at last man-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the  |
|hoops, rap, rap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, EX OFFICIO, |
|every sailor is a cooper. At length, when the last pint is casked, and all is   |
|cool, then the great hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown  |
|open, and down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the      |
|hatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up. In the  |
|sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable incidents in all the  |
|business of whaling. One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil;  |
|on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely    |
|piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the    |
|try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with    |
|unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands |
|the din is deafening. But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick     |
|your ears in this self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and   |
|try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with   |
|a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a    |
|singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks never look so     |
|white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes    |
|of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent lye is readily made; and whenever   |
|any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that  |
|lye quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with   |
|buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is      |
|brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which have been in  |
|use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed  |
|and placed upon the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out    |
|of sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and  |
|simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company, the whole of this    |
|conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to    |
|their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to     |
|the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out    |
|the daintiest Holland. Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and  |
|threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; |
|propose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not to      |
|taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked |
|mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They     |
|know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins! But     |
|mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent on spying    |
|out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil the old oaken     |
|furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is  |
|the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night;   |
|continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where     |
|they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,--they only step |
|to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and     |
|slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the     |
|combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the |
|heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship,   |
|and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just   |
|buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of "There    |
|she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole  |
|weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life.   |
|For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast    |
|bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed      |
|ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles   |
|of the soul; hardly is this done, when--THERE SHE BLOWS!--the ghost is spouted  |
|up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old |
|routine again. Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece,   |
|two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee  |
|along the Peruvian coast last voyage--and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green|
|simple boy, how to splice a rope! Ere now it has been related how Ahab was wont |
|to pace his quarter-deck, taking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle    |
|and mainmast; but in the multiplicity of other things requiring narration it    |
|has not been added how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his  |
|mood, he was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely      |
|eyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the binnacle,    |
|with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the compass, that glance shot |
|like a javelin with the pointed intensity of his purpose; and when resuming     |
|his walk he again paused before the mainmast, then, as the same riveted glance  |
|fastened upon the riveted gold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of     |
|nailed firmness, only dashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.   |
|But one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly attracted  |
|by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as though now for the    |
|first time beginning to interpret for himself in some monomaniac way whatever   |
|significance might lurk in them. And some certain significance lurks in all     |
|things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an     |
|empty cipher, except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to |
|fill up some morass in the Milky Way. Now this doubloon was of purest, virgin   |
|gold, raked somewhere out of the heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and      |
|west, over golden sands, the head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though   |
|now nailed amidst all the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper   |
|spikes, yet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its |
|Quito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour passed by |
|ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with thick darkness    |
|which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless every sunrise found the  |
|doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it was set apart and sanctified to  |
|one awe-striking end; and however wanton in their sailor ways, one and all,     |
|the mariners revered it as the white whale's talisman. Sometimes they talked    |
|it over in the weary watch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and  |
|whether he would ever live to spend it. Now those noble golden coins of South   |
|America are as medals of the sun and tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas,  |
|and volcanoes; sun's disks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich      |
|banners waving, are in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold   |
|seems almost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by passing  |
|through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic. It so chanced that the doubloon |
|of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it|
|bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from   |
|a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator,    |
|and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning   |
|clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three|
|Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing    |
|cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs |
|all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the      |
|equinoctial point at Libra. Before this equatorial coin, Ahab, not unobserved by|
|others, was now pausing. "There's something ever egotistical in mountain-tops   |
|and towers, and all other grand and lofty things; look here,--three peaks as    |
|proud as Lucifer. The firm tower, that is Ahab; the volcano, that is Ahab; the  |
|courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are     |
|Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like    |
|a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own      |
|mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve  |
|them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face;  |
|but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months     |
|before he wheeled out of a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be  |
|it, then. Born in throes, 't is fit that man should live in pains and die in    |
|pangs! So be it, then! Here's stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then."  |
|"No fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil's claws must have left   |
|their mouldings there since yesterday," murmured Starbuck to himself, leaning   |
|against the bulwarks. "The old man seems to read Belshazzar's awful writing.    |
|I have never marked the coin inspectingly. He goes below; let me read. A dark   |
|valley between three mighty, heaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity,|
|in some faint earthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and |
|over all our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a hope.  |
|If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil; but if we lift   |
|them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to cheer. Yet, oh, the great    |
|sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we would fain snatch some sweet solace  |
|from him, we gaze for him in vain! This coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but  |
|still sadly to me. I will quit it, lest Truth shake me falsely." "There now's   |
|the old Mogul," soliloquized Stubb by the try-works, "he's been twigging it;    |
|and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with faces which I should say   |
|might be somewhere within nine fathoms long. And all from looking at a piece of |
|gold, which did I have it now on Negro Hill or in Corlaer's Hook, I'd not look  |
|at it very long ere spending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I    |
|regard this as queer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your    |
|doubloons of old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your   |
|doubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold moidores   |
|and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What then should there |
|be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing wonderful? By Golconda!   |
|let me read it once. Halloa! here's signs and wonders truly! That, now, is      |
|what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the zodiac, and what my almanac below    |
|calls ditto. I'll get the almanac and as I have heard devils can be raised with |
|Daboll's arithmetic, I'll try my hand at raising a meaning out of these queer   |
|curvicues here with the Massachusetts calendar. Here's the book. Let's see now. |
|Signs and wonders; and the sun, he's always among 'em. Hem, hem, hem; here      |
|they are--here they go--all alive:--Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull and  |
|Jimimi! here's Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels among 'em. |
|Aye, here on the coin he's just crossing the threshold between two of twelve    |
|sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there; the fact is, you books must   |
|know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in |
|to supply the thoughts. That's my small experience, so far as the Massachusetts |
|calendar, and Bowditch's navigator, and Daboll's arithmetic go. Signs and       |
|wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in    |
|wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it!  |
|Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter;   |
|and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin:   |
|there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the    |
|Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue   |
|and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us  |
|back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he    |
|gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo,|
|the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when |
|pop comes Libra, or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while  |
|we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the      |
|Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the   |
|arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck   |
|out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat;|
|full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the  |
|Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with     |
|Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven,     |
|and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and   |
|hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so, alow  |
|here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But stop;|
|here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and let's hear what|
|he'll have to say. There; he's before it; he'll out with something presently.   |
|So, so; he's beginning." "I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold,   |
|and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's |
|all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true; and at   |
|two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won't smoke dirty  |
|pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's nine hundred and sixty of them; |
|so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out." "Shall I call that wise or foolish,   |
|now; if it be really wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really     |
|foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our   |
|old Manxman--the old hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took  |
|to the sea. He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the      |
|other side of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now  |
|he's back again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering--voice like an old   |
|worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!" "If the White Whale be raised, it|
|must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs.   |
|I've studied signs, and know their marks; they were taught me two score years   |
|ago, by the old witch in Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be?    |
|The horse-shoe sign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what's the   |
|horse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign--the roaring and devouring     |
|lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee." "There's another    |
|rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in one kind of world, you   |
|see. Dodge again! here comes Queequeg--all tattooing--looks like the signs of   |
|the Zodiac himself. What says the Cannibal? As I live he's comparing notes;     |
|looking at his thigh bone; thinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or   |
|in the bowels, I suppose, as the old women talk Surgeon's Astronomy in the      |
|back country. And by Jove, he's found something there in the vicinity of his    |
|thigh--I guess it's Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don't know what to make  |
|of the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king's trowsers. But,   |
|aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail coiled out of sight    |
|as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual. What does he say, with that  |
|look of his? Ah, only makes a sign to the sign and bows himself; there is a     |
|sun on the coin--fire worshipper, depend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way   |
|comes Pip--poor boy! would he had died, or I; he's half horrible to me. He too  |
|has been watching all of these interpreters--myself included--and look now, he  |
|comes to read, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him.   |
|Hark!" "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look." "Upon my      |
|soul, he's been studying Murray's Grammar! Improving his mind, poor fellow! But |
|what's that he says now--hist!" "I look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look,  |
|they look." "Why, he's getting it by heart--hist! again." "I look, you look,    |
|he looks; we look, ye look, they look." "Well, that's funny." "And I, you, and  |
|he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I'm a crow, especially when I stand |
|a'top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! caw! Ain't I a crow? And |
|where's the scare-crow? There he stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old     |
|trowsers, and two more poked into the sleeves of an old jacket." "Wonder if he  |
|means me?--complimentary!--poor lad!--I could go hang myself. Any way, for the  |
|present, I'll quit Pip's vicinity. I can stand the rest, for they have plain    |
|wits; but he's too crazy-witty for my sanity. So, so, I leave him muttering."   |
|"Here's the ship's navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire to       |
|unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what's the consequence? Then again, if |
|it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught's nailed to the mast it's a    |
|sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old Ahab! the White Whale; he'll nail  |
|ye! This is a pine tree. My father, in old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree |
|once, and found a silver ring grown over in it; some old darkey's wedding ring. |
|How did it get there? And so they'll say in the resurrection, when they come to |
|fish up this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters for|
|the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the green miser'll |
|hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes 'mong the worlds blackberrying. Cook! ho,   |
|cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your   |
|hoe-cake done!" "Ship, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?" So cried Ahab, once    |
|more hailing a ship showing English colours, bearing down under the stern.      |
|Trumpet to mouth, the old man was standing in his hoisted quarter-boat, his     |
|ivory leg plainly revealed to the stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining|
|in his own boat's bow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking|
|man, of sixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round |
|him in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket streamed  |
|behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar's surcoat. "Hast seen the White   |
|Whale!" "See you this?" and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,   |
|he held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head like a |
|mallet. "Man my boat!" cried Ahab, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near |
|him--"Stand by to lower!" In less than a minute, without quitting his little    |
|craft, he and his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the|
|stranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the excitement of  |
|the moment, Ahab had forgotten that since the loss of his leg he had never once |
|stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then it was always by an |
|ingenious and very handy mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a   |
|thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's warning.   |
|Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody--except those who are almost hourly  |
|used to it, like whalemen--to clamber up a ship's side from a boat on the open  |
|sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks, and   |
|then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived of one   |
|leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether unsupplied with the kindly |
|invention, Ahab now found himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again;  |
|hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he could hardly hope to attain.|
|It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circumstance     |
|that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless mishap, almost   |
|invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in the present instance, all this |
|was heightened by the sight of the two officers of the strange ship, leaning    |
|over the side, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging |
|towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not|
|seem to bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to use |
|their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the    |
|strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, "I see, I  |
|see!--avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle." As   |
|good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two previous,  |
|and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive curved blubber-hook,    |
|now clean and dry, was still attached to the end. This was quickly lowered to   |
|Ahab, who at once comprehending it all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve  |
|of the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of    |
|an apple tree), and then giving the word, held himself fast, and at the same    |
|time also helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of |
|the running parts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high    |
|bulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm frankly   |
|thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his  |
|ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish blades) cried out    |
|in his walrus way, "Aye, aye, hearty! let us shake bones together!--an arm      |
|and a leg!--an arm that never can shrink, d'ye see; and a leg that never can    |
|run. Where did'st thou see the White Whale?--how long ago?" "The White Whale,"  |
|said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards the East, and taking a      |
|rueful sight along it, as if it had been a telescope; "there I saw him, on      |
|the Line, last season." "And he took that arm off, did he?" asked Ahab, now     |
|sliding down from the capstan, and resting on the Englishman's shoulder, as he  |
|did so. "Aye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?" "Spin me    |
|the yarn," said Ahab; "how was it?" "It was the first time in my life that I    |
|ever cruised on the Line," began the Englishman. "I was ignorant of the White   |
|Whale at that time. Well, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales,  |
|and my boat fastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that   |
|went milling and milling round so, that my boat's crew could only trim dish,    |
|by sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches from    |
|the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white head and hump, |
|all crows' feet and wrinkles." "It was he, it was he!" cried Ahab, suddenly     |
|letting out his suspended breath. "And harpoons sticking in near his starboard  |
|fin." "Aye, aye--they were mine--MY irons," cried Ahab, exultingly--"but on!"   |
|"Give me a chance, then," said the Englishman, good-humoredly. "Well, this      |
|old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the    |
|pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line! "Aye, I see!--wanted to    |
|part it; free the fast-fish--an old trick--I know him." "How it was exactly,"   |
|continued the one-armed commander, "I do not know; but in biting the line, it   |
|got foul of his teeth, caught there somehow; but we didn't know it then; so that|
|when we afterwards pulled on the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump!     |
|instead of the other whale's; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing    |
|how matters stood, and what a noble great whale it was--the noblest and biggest |
|I ever saw, sir, in my life--I resolved to capture him, spite of the boiling    |
|rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would get loose, or   |
|the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a devil of a boat's crew     |
|for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I say, I jumped into my first     |
|mate's boat--Mr. Mounttop's here (by the way, Captain--Mounttop; Mounttop--the  |
|captain);--as I was saying, I jumped into Mounttop's boat, which, d'ye see, was |
|gunwale and gunwale with mine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this  |
|old great-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir--hearts and souls alive,|
|man--the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat--both eyes out--all      |
|befogged and bedeadened with black foam--the whale's tail looming straight up   |
|out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble steeple. No use sterning all,|
|then; but as I was groping at midday, with a blinding sun, all crown-jewels;    |
|as I was groping, I say, after the second iron, to toss it overboard--down      |
|comes the tail like a Lima tower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half     |
|in splinters; and, flukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as    |
|though it was all chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I |
|seized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung to that  |
|like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at the same instant,  |
|the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down like a flash; and the barb   |
|of that cursed second iron towing along near me caught me here" (clapping his   |
|hand just below his shoulder); "yes, caught me just here, I say, and bore me    |
|down to Hell's flames, I was thinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the   |
|good God, the barb ript its way along the flesh--clear along the whole length   |
|of my arm--came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;--and that gentleman there  |
|will tell you the rest (by the way, captain--Dr. Bunger, ship's surgeon:        |
|Bunger, my lad,--the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the yarn."    |
|The professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all the time   |
|standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote his gentlemanly    |
|rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but sober one; he was dressed  |
|in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and patched trowsers; and had thus far  |
|been dividing his attention between a marlingspike he held in one hand, and a   |
|pill-box held in the other, occasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory |
|limbs of the two crippled captains. But, at his superior's introduction of him  |
|to Ahab, he politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain's bidding.|
|"It was a shocking bad wound," began the whale-surgeon; "and, taking my advice, |
|Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy--" "Samuel Enderby is the name of my   |
|ship," interrupted the one-armed captain, addressing Ahab; "go on, boy." "Stood |
|our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing hot weather there |
|on the Line. But it was no use--I did all I could; sat up with him nights; was  |
|very severe with him in the matter of diet--" "Oh, very severe!" chimed in the  |
|patient himself; then suddenly altering his voice, "Drinking hot rum toddies    |
|with me every night, till he couldn't see to put on the bandages; and sending   |
|me to bed, half seas over, about three o'clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars!    |
|he sat up with me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher,  |
|and very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh out! why   |
|don't ye? You know you're a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave ahead, boy, I'd  |
|rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other man." "My captain, you must|
|have ere this perceived, respected sir"--said the imperturbable godly-looking   |
|Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab--"is apt to be facetious at times; he spins     |
|us many clever things of that sort. But I may as well say--en passant, as the   |
|French remark--that I myself--that is to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend |
|clergy--am a strict total abstinence man; I never drink--" "Water!" cried the   |
|captain; "he never drinks it; it's a sort of fits to him; fresh water throws    |
|him into the hydrophobia; but go on--go on with the arm story." "Yes, I may as  |
|well," said the surgeon, coolly. "I was about observing, sir, before Captain    |
|Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavors,  |
|the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly      |
|gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long.   |
|I measured it with the lead line. In short, it grew black; I knew what was      |
|threatened, and off it came. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there;|
|that thing is against all rule"--pointing at it with the marlingspike--"that    |
|is the captain's work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had    |
|that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one's brains out with, I   |
|suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes.    |
|Do ye see this dent, sir"--removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and   |
|exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest      |
|scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound--"Well, the captain there|
|will tell you how that came here; he knows." "No, I don't," said the captain,   |
|"but his mother did; he was born with it. Oh, you solemn rogue, you--you Bunger!|
|was there ever such another Bunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die,   |
|you ought to die in pickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages,    |
|you rascal." "What became of the White Whale?" now cried Ahab, who thus far had |
|been impatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen. "Oh!"    |
|cried the one-armed captain, "oh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we didn't see    |
|him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I didn't then know what   |
|whale it was that had served me such a trick, till some time afterwards, when   |
|coming back to the Line, we heard about Moby Dick--as some call him--and then   |
|I knew it was he." "Did'st thou cross his wake again?" "Twice." "But could      |
|not fasten?" "Didn't want to try to: ain't one limb enough? What should I do    |
|without this other arm? And I'm thinking Moby Dick doesn't bite so much as he   |
|swallows." "Well, then," interrupted Bunger, "give him your left arm for bait to|
|get the right. Do you know, gentlemen"--very gravely and mathematically bowing  |
|to each Captain in succession--"Do you know, gentlemen, that the digestive      |
|organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine Providence, that   |
|it is quite impossible for him to completely digest even a man's arm? And he    |
|knows it too. So that what you take for the White Whale's malice is only his    |
|awkwardness. For he never means to swallow a single limb; he only thinks to     |
|terrify by feints. But sometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly   |
|a patient of mine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once      |
|upon a time let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a    |
|twelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in small    |
|tacks, d'ye see. No possible way for him to digest that jack-knife, and fully   |
|incorporate it into his general bodily system. Yes, Captain Boomer, if you      |
|are quick enough about it, and have a mind to pawn one arm for the sake of      |
|the privilege of giving decent burial to the other, why in that case the arm    |
|is yours; only let the whale have another chance at you shortly, that's all."   |
|"No, thank ye, Bunger," said the English Captain, "he's welcome to the arm he   |
|has, since I can't help it, and didn't know him then; but not to another one.   |
|No more White Whales for me; I've lowered for him once, and that has satisfied  |
|me. There would be great glory in killing him, I know that; and there is a      |
|ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark ye, he's best let alone; don't    |
|you think so, Captain?"--glancing at the ivory leg. "He is. But he will still   |
|be hunted, for all that. What is best let alone, that accursed thing is not     |
|always what least allures. He's all a magnet! How long since thou saw'st him    |
|last? Which way heading?" "Bless my soul, and curse the foul fiend's," cried    |
|Bunger, stoopingly walking round Ahab, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; "this|
|man's blood--bring the thermometer!--it's at the boiling point!--his pulse makes|
|these planks beat!--sir!"--taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing near    |
|to Ahab's arm. "Avast!" roared Ahab, dashing him against the bulwarks--"Man     |
|the boat! Which way heading?" "Good God!" cried the English Captain, to whom    |
|the question was put. "What's the matter? He was heading east, I think.--Is     |
|your Captain crazy?" whispering Fedallah. But Fedallah, putting a finger on     |
|his lip, slid over the bulwarks to take the boat's steering oar, and Ahab,      |
|swinging the cutting-tackle towards him, commanded the ship's sailors to stand  |
|by to lower. In a moment he was standing in the boat's stern, and the Manilla   |
|men were springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him. With  |
|back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own, Ahab stood     |
|upright till alongside of the Pequod. Ere the English ship fades from sight,    |
|be it set down here, that she hailed from London, and was named after the late  |
|Samuel Enderby, merchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling       |
|house of Enderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman's opinion, comes     |
|not far behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point of  |
|real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord 1775, this    |
|great whaling house was in existence, my numerous fish-documents do not make    |
|plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out the first English ships that ever  |
|regularly hunted the Sperm Whale; though for some score of years previous (ever |
|since 1726) our valiant Coffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in |
|large fleets pursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic:  |
|not elsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were the   |
|first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm Whale; and  |
|that for half a century they were the only people of the whole globe who so     |
|harpooned him. In 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express     |
|purpose, and at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape   |
|Horn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort     |
|in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one; and returning   |
|to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm, the Amelia's example     |
|was soon followed by other ships, English and American, and thus the vast       |
|Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were thrown open. But not content with this  |
|good deed, the indefatigable house again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his   |
|Sons--how many, their mother only knows--and under their immediate auspices,    |
|and partly, I think, at their expense, the British government was induced to    |
|send the sloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South   |
|Sea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling voyage      |
|of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this is not all.     |
|In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship of their own, to      |
|go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan. That ship--well called    |
|the "Syren"--made a noble experimental cruise; and it was thus that the great   |
|Japanese Whaling Ground first became generally known. The Syren in this famous  |
|voyage was commanded by a Captain Coffin, a Nantucketer. All honour to the      |
|Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to the present day; though   |
|doubtless the original Samuel must long ago have slipped his cable for the      |
|great South Sea of the other world. The ship named after him was worthy of the  |
|honour, being a very fast sailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her     |
|once at midnight somewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down   |
|in the forecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps--every    |
|soul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine gam I     |
|had--long, very long after old Ahab touched her planks with his ivory heel--it  |
|minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that ship; and may my parson |
|forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever lose sight of it. Flip? Did I   |
|say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it at the rate of ten gallons the hour;    |
|and when the squall came (for it's squally off there by Patagonia), and all     |
|hands--visitors and all--were called to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy     |
|that we had to swing each other aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the |
|skirts of our jackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the |
|howling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts did not |
|go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that we had to pass the|
|flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting down the forecastle scuttle,  |
|rather too much diluted and pickled it to my taste. The beef was fine--tough,   |
|but with body in it. They said it was bull-beef; others, that it was dromedary  |
|beef; but I do not know, for certain, how that was. They had dumplings too;     |
|small, but substantial, symmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings.   |
|I fancied that you could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were  |
|swallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their pitching out   |
|of you like billiard-balls. The bread--but that couldn't be helped; besides,    |
|it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread contained the only fresh fare     |
|they had. But the forecastle was not very light, and it was very easy to step   |
|over into a dark corner when you ate it. But all in all, taking her from truck  |
|to helm, considering the dimensions of the cook's boilers, including his own    |
|live parchment boilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly     |
|ship; of good fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and     |
|capital from boot heels to hat-band. But why was it, think ye, that the Samuel  |
|Enderby, and some other English whalers I know of--not all though--were such    |
|famous, hospitable ships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and        |
|the can, and the joke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and     |
|laughing? I will tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is |
|matter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of historical    |
|whale research, when it has seemed needed. The English were preceded in the     |
|whale fishery by the Hollanders, Zealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived  |
|many terms still extant in the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old     |
|fashions, touching plenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the        |
|English merchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence,   |
|in the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal and natural, but |
|incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some special origin, which |
|is here pointed out, and will be still further elucidated. During my researches |
|in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an ancient Dutch volume, which,   |
|by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew must be about whalers. The title was,  |
|"Dan Coopman," wherefore I concluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs   |
|of some Amsterdam cooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its     |
|cooper. I was reinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production   |
|of one "Fitz Swackhammer." But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man,      |
|professor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus and St.    |
|Pott's, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a box of sperm    |
|candles for his trouble--this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as he spied the book,  |
|assured me that "Dan Coopman" did not mean "The Cooper," but "The Merchant."    |
|In short, this ancient and learned Low Dutch book treated of the commerce of    |
|Holland; and, among other subjects, contained a very interesting account of     |
|its whale fishery. And in this chapter it was, headed, "Smeer," or "Fat," that  |
|I found a long detailed list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of      |
|180 sail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead, I   |
|transcribe the following: 400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork.     |
|150,000 lbs. of stock fish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. |
|2,800 firkins of butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese |
|(probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of beer.   |
|Most statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in the present|
|case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole pipes, barrels, quarts,   |
|and gills of good gin and good cheer. At the time, I devoted three days to the  |
|studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound|
|thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and     |
|Platonic application; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my   |
|own, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by every Low  |
|Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen whale fishery. In    |
|the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and Leyden cheese consumed,    |
|seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being  |
|rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially    |
|by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of  |
|that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers |
|of train oil. The quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now,    |
|as those polar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that   |
|climate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen, including the |
|short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not much exceed three months, |
|say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their fleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low |
|Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I say, we have precisely two barrels of beer    |
|per man, for a twelve weeks' allowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of     |
|that 550 ankers of gin. Now, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled |
|as one might fancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up    |
|in a boat's head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem somewhat  |
|improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But this was very far   |
|North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with the constitution; upon     |
|the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would be apt to make the harpooneer  |
|sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his boat; and grievous loss might ensue    |
|to Nantucket and New Bedford. But no more; enough has been said to show that    |
|the old Dutch whalers of two or three centuries ago were high livers; and that  |
|the English whalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they,  |
|when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, |
|get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the decanter. Hitherto, |
|in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly dwelt upon the     |
|marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail upon some few interior |
|structural features. But to a large and thorough sweeping comprehension of him, |
|it behooves me now to unbutton him still further, and untagging the points of   |
|his hose, unbuckling his garters, and casting loose the hooks and the eyes of   |
|the joints of his innermost bones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is |
|to say, in his unconditional skeleton. But how now, Ishmael? How is it, that    |
|you, a mere oarsman in the fishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean|
|parts of the whale? Did erudite Stubb, mounted upon your capstan, deliver       |
|lectures on the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a  |
|specimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Ishmael. Can you land a full-grown|
|whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a roast-pig? Surely not.   |
|A veritable witness have you hitherto been, Ishmael; but have a care how you    |
|seize the privilege of Jonah alone; the privilege of discoursing upon the joists|
|and beams; the rafters, ridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the |
|frame-work of leviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, |
|and cheeseries in his bowels. I confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have    |
|penetrated very far beneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have   |
|been blessed with an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I       |
|belonged to, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his|
|poke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the heads   |
|of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my boat-hatchet    |
|and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the contents of that      |
|young cub? And as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their |
|gigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted to my   |
|late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides. For being at  |
|Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey of Algiers, I was     |
|invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with the lord of Tranque,      |
|at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side glen not very far distant      |
|from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his capital. Among many other fine    |
|qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted with a devout love for all     |
|matters of barbaric vertu, had brought together in Pupella whatever rare things |
|the more ingenious of his people could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful|
|devices, chiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and  |
|all these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the wonder-freighted,     |
|tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores. Chief among these latter was  |
|a great Sperm Whale, which, after an unusually long raging gale, had been found |
|dead and stranded, with his head against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like,  |
|tufted droopings seemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been    |
|stripped of its fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the    |
|sun, then the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where a   |
|grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it. The ribs were hung with trophies;|
|the vertebrae were carved with Arsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in  |
|the skull, the priests kept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the    |
|mystic head again sent forth its vapoury spout; while, suspended from a bough,  |
|the terrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung sword |
|that so affrighted Damocles. It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as     |
|mosses of the Icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living  |
|sap; the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver's loom, with a gorgeous      |
|carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and    |
|the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches;   |
|all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these     |
|unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun       |
|seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen  |
|weaver!--pause!--one word!--whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck?  |
|wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!--stay thy hand!--but one |
|single word with thee! Nay--the shuttle flies--the figures float from forth     |
|the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he   |
|weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and  |
|by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we   |
|escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even     |
|so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among   |
|the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls,      |
|bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah,  |
|mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world's loom, thy|
|subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar. Now, amid the green, life-restless    |
|loom of that Arsacidean wood, the great, white, worshipped skeleton lay         |
|lounging--a gigantic idler! Yet, as the ever-woven verdant warp and woof        |
|intermixed and hummed around him, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver;   |
|himself all woven over with the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher    |
|verdure; but himself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the   |
|grim god wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories. Now,     |
|when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the skull an     |
|altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real jet had issued,   |
|I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an object of vertu. He      |
|laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests should swear that smoky jet of   |
|his was genuine. To and fro I paced before this skeleton--brushed the vines     |
|aside--broke through the ribs--and with a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered,   |
|eddied long amid its many winding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon      |
|my line was out; and following it back, I emerged from the opening where I      |
|entered. I saw no living thing within; naught was there but bones. Cutting      |
|me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton. From their     |
|arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the altitude of the    |
|final rib, "How now!" they shouted; "Dar'st thou measure this our god! That's   |
|for us." "Aye, priests--well, how long do ye make him, then?" But hereupon      |
|a fierce contest rose among them, concerning feet and inches; they cracked      |
|each other's sconces with their yard-sticks--the great skull echoed--and        |
|seizing that lucky chance, I quickly concluded my own admeasurements. These     |
|admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it recorded,      |
|that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied measurement I please.  |
|Because there are skeleton authorities you can refer to, to test my accuracy.   |
|There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell me, in Hull, England, one of the       |
|whaling ports of that country, where they have some fine specimens of fin-backs |
|and other whales. Likewise, I have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in   |
|New Hampshire, they have what the proprietors call "the only perfect specimen   |
|of a Greenland or River Whale in the United States." Moreover, at a place in    |
|Yorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford Constable  |
|has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of moderate size, by no|
|means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend King Tranquo's. In both cases,   |
|the stranded whales to which these two skeletons belonged, were originally      |
|claimed by their proprietors upon similar grounds. King Tranquo seizing his     |
|because he wanted it; and Sir Clifford, because he was lord of the seignories   |
|of those parts. Sir Clifford's whale has been articulated throughout; so that,  |
|like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony       |
|cavities--spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan--and swing all day upon his   |
|lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and shutters; and a  |
|footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of keys at his side. Sir   |
|Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep at the whispering gallery in    |
|the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo in the hollow of his cerebellum; |
|and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead. The skeleton dimensions |
|I shall now proceed to set down are copied verbatim from my right arm, where    |
|I had them tattooed; as in my wild wanderings at that period, there was no      |
|other secure way of preserving such valuable statistics. But as I was crowded   |
|for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for     |
|a poem I was then composing--at least, what untattooed parts might remain--I    |
|did not trouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all   |
|enter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale. In the first place, I wish   |
|to lay before you a particular, plain statement, touching the living bulk of    |
|this leviathan, whose skeleton we are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement      |
|may prove useful here. According to a careful calculation I have made, and      |
|which I partly base upon Captain Scoresby's estimate, of seventy tons for the   |
|largest sized Greenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful  |
|calculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between eighty-five |
|and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty feet in its fullest    |
|circumference, such a whale will weigh at least ninety tons; so that, reckoning |
|thirteen men to a ton, he would considerably outweigh the combined population   |
|of a whole village of one thousand one hundred inhabitants. Think you not then  |
|that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to this leviathan, to make him    |
|at all budge to any landsman's imagination? Having already in various ways put  |
|before you his skull, spout-hole, jaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers  |
|other parts, I shall now simply point out what is most interesting in the       |
|general bulk of his unobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so   |
|very large a proportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far   |
|the most complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it in    |
|this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under your arm,    |
|as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion of the general     |
|structure we are about to view. In length, the Sperm Whale's skeleton at Tranque|
|measured seventy-two Feet; so that when fully invested and extended in life,    |
|he must have been ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about  |
|one fifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two feet,    |
|his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty feet of plain  |
|back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less than a third of its   |
|length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs which once enclosed his vitals.  |
|To me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine, extending  |
|far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled the hull of a great |
|ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some twenty of her naked bow-ribs are  |
|inserted, and the keel is otherwise, for the time, but a long, disconnected     |
|timber. The ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was     |
|nearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each successively      |
|longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one of the middle ribs,    |
|which measured eight feet and some inches. From that part, the remaining ribs   |
|diminished, till the tenth and last only spanned five feet and some inches.     |
|In general thickness, they all bore a seemly correspondence to their length.    |
|The middle ribs were the most arched. In some of the Arsacides they are used    |
|for beams whereon to lay footpath bridges over small streams. In considering    |
|these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the circumstance, so variously  |
|repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale is by no means the mould  |
|of his invested form. The largest of the Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones,  |
|occupied that part of the fish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the   |
|greatest depth of the invested body of this particular whale must have been at  |
|least sixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more     |
|than eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion of      |
|the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I now saw but   |
|a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with tons of added bulk     |
|in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for the ample fins, I here     |
|saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of the weighty and majestic,      |
|but boneless flukes, an utter blank! How vain and foolish, then, thought I,     |
|for timid untravelled man to try to comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by   |
|merely poring over his dead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful     |
|wood. No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings   |
|of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested |
|whale be truly and livingly found out. But the spine. For that, the best way we |
|can consider it is, with a crane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy   |
|enterprise. But now it's done, it looks much like Pompey's Pillar. There are    |
|forty and odd vertebrae in all, which in the skeleton are not locked together.  |
|They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a Gothic spire, forming solid  |
|courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a middle one, is in width something less |
|than three feet, and in depth more than four. The smallest, where the spine     |
|tapers away into the tail, is only two inches in width, and looks something     |
|like a white billiard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but  |
|they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who  |
|had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even    |
|the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play. From   |
|his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon to enlarge,    |
|amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not compress him. By good|
|rights he should only be treated of in imperial folio. Not to tell over again   |
|his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist;  |
|only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him |
|like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a   |
|line-of-battle-ship. Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it    |
|behooves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not    |
|overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him out to    |
|the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him in most of his   |
|present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now remains to magnify him  |
|in an archaeological, fossiliferous, and antediluvian point of view. Applied    |
|to any other creature than the Leviathan--to an ant or a flea--such portly      |
|terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan    |
|is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under    |
|the weightiest words of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it   |
|has been convenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have |
|invariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased for that  |
|purpose; because that famous lexicographer's uncommon personal bulk more fitted |
|him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author like me. One often hears  |
|of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an    |
|ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my   |
|chirography expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! Give me    |
|Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of |
|penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with    |
|their outreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle |
|of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and mastodons,     |
|past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth,|
|and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. Such, and so      |
|magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! We expand to its bulk.  |
|To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring |
|volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it. |
|Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my credentials as a   |
|geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I have been a stone-mason,  |
|and also a great digger of ditches, canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars,     |
|and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind  |
|the reader, that while in the earlier geological strata there are found the     |
|fossils of monsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics        |
|discovered in what are called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or   |
|at any rate intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those   |
|whose remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil Whales  |
|hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the last preceding  |
|the superficial formations. And though none of them precisely answer to any     |
|known species of the present time, they are yet sufficiently akin to them in    |
|general respects, to justify their taking rank as Cetacean fossils. Detached    |
|broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones and skeletons,   |
|have within thirty years past, at various intervals, been found at the base of  |
|the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England, in Scotland, and in the States of |
|Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Among the more curious of such remains is  |
|part of a skull, which in the year 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in  |
|Paris, a short street opening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; |
|and bones disinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon's   |
|time. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some utterly        |
|unknown Leviathanic species. But by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean      |
|relics was the almost complete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in    |
|the year 1842, on the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken  |
|credulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the fallen     |
|angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and bestowed upon it    |
|the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of it being taken across the  |
|sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned out that this alleged reptile     |
|was a whale, though of a departed species. A significant illustration of the    |
|fact, again and again repeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale     |
|furnishes but little clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen      |
|rechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the London     |
|Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most extraordinary  |
|creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted out of existence. When  |
|I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and  |
|vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of  |
|sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities |
|to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am,  |
|by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to  |
|have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn's grey chaos rolls over me,    |
|and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged  |
|bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the      |
|25,000 miles of this world's circumference, not an inhabitable hand's breadth of|
|land was visible. Then the whole world was the whale's; and, king of creation,  |
|he left his wake along the present lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who    |
|can show a pedigree like Leviathan? Ahab's harpoon had shed older blood than    |
|the Pharaoh's. Methuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands       |
|with Shem. I am horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the    |
|unspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time, must needs|
|exist after all humane ages are over. But not alone has this Leviathan left his |
|pre-adamite traces in the stereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl|
|bequeathed his ancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems   |
|to claim for them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable   |
|print of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some fifty   |
|years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a sculptured and       |
|painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins, and dolphins, similar     |
|to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe of the moderns. Gliding among   |
|them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was there swimming in that planisphere,    |
|centuries before Solomon was cradled. Nor must there be omitted another strange |
|attestation of the antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian     |
|reality, as set down by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller. "Not |
|far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams of which are   |
|made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are oftentimes cast up dead |
|upon that shore. The Common People imagine, that by a secret Power bestowed by  |
|God upon the temple, no Whale can pass it without immediate death. But the truth|
|of the Matter is, that on either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot |
|two Miles into the Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon 'em. They     |
|keep a Whale's Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the  |
|Ground with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which cannot  |
|be reached by a Man upon a Camel's Back. This Rib (says John Leo) is said to    |
|have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their Historians affirm, that a|
|Prophet who prophesy'd of Mahomet, came from this Temple, and some do not stand |
|to assert, that the Prophet Jonas was cast forth by the Whale at the Base of    |
|the Temple." In this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you  |
|be a Nantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there. Inasmuch,    |
|then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the head-waters of  |
|the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his    |
|generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his sires. But    |
|upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the present day     |
|superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are found in the Tertiary   |
|system (embracing a distinct geological period prior to man), but of the whales |
|found in that Tertiary system, those belonging to its latter formations exceed  |
|in size those of its earlier ones. Of all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed,   |
|by far the largest is the Alabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that   |
|was less than seventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already  |
|seen, that the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a large  |
|sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen's authority, that Sperm Whales|
|have been captured near a hundred feet long at the time of capture. But may it  |
|not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an advance in magnitude   |
|upon those of all previous geological periods; may it not be, that since Adam's |
|time they have degenerated? Assuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit |
|the accounts of such gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. |
|For Pliny tells us of Whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and Aldrovandus|
|of others which measured eight hundred feet in length--Rope Walks and Thames    |
|Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks and Solander, Cooke's          |
|naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy of Sciences setting down    |
|certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or Wrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and  |
|twenty yards; that is, three hundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the French   |
|naturalist, in his elaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his    |
|work (page 3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred   |
|and twenty-eight feet. And this work was published so late as A.D. 1825. But    |
|will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day is as big as   |
|his ancestors in Pliny's time. And if ever I go where Pliny is, I, a whaleman   |
|(more than he was), will make bold to tell him so. Because I cannot understand  |
|how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies that were buried thousands of years  |
|before even Pliny was born, do not measure so much in their coffins as a modern |
|Kentuckian in his socks; and while the cattle and other animals sculptured on   |
|the oldest Egyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in which   |
|they are drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize      |
|cattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far exceed in magnitude the fattest   |
|of Pharaoh's fat kine; in the face of all this, I will not admit that of all    |
|animals the whale alone should have degenerated. But still another inquiry      |
|remains; one often agitated by the more recondite Nantucketers. Whether owing   |
|to the almost omniscient look-outs at the mast-heads of the whaleships, now     |
|penetrating even through Behring's straits, and into the remotest secret drawers|
|and lockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along     |
|all continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long endure    |
|so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not at last be     |
|exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the last man, smoke his  |
|last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final puff. Comparing the humped   |
|herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo, which, not forty years ago,   |
|overspread by tens of thousands the prairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook|
|their iron manes and scowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of |
|populous river-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar |
|an inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem furnished, to |
|show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy extinction. But you must    |
|look at this matter in every light. Though so short a period ago--not a good    |
|lifetime--the census of the buffalo in Illinois exceeded the census of men now  |
|in London, and though at the present day not one horn or hoof of them remains   |
|in all that region; and though the cause of this wondrous extermination was     |
|the spear of man; yet the far different nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily   |
|forbids so inglorious an end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the|
|Sperm Whales for forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and    |
|thank God, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the    |
|days of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West, when the  |
|far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness and a virgin, the   |
|same number of moccasined men, for the same number of months, mounted on horse  |
|instead of sailing in ships, would have slain not forty, but forty thousand and |
|more buffaloes; a fact that, if need were, could be statistically stated. Nor,  |
|considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the gradual extinction|
|of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former years (the latter part of the   |
|last century, say) these Leviathans, in small pods, were encountered much       |
|oftener than at present, and, in consequence, the voyages were not so prolonged,|
|and were also much more remunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed,   |
|those whales, influenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense  |
|caravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes, and pods,  |
|and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but widely separated,    |
|unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally fallacious seems the conceit, that  |
|because the so-called whale-bone whales no longer haunt many grounds in former  |
|years abounding with them, hence that species also is declining. For they       |
|are only being driven from promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longer    |
|enlivened with their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been|
|very recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle. Furthermore: concerning     |
|these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two firm fortresses, which, in all   |
|human probability, will for ever remain impregnable. And as upon the invasion of|
|their valleys, the frosty Swiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted   |
|from the savannas and glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can      |
|at last resort to their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy    |
|barriers and walls there, come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed  |
|circle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man. But as    |
|perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one cachalot, some   |
|philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this positive havoc has      |
|already very seriously diminished their battalions. But though for some time    |
|past a number of these whales, not less than 13,000, have been annually slain   |
|on the nor'-west coast by the Americans alone; yet there are considerations     |
|which render even this circumstance of little or no account as an opposing      |
|argument in this matter. Natural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning |
|the populousness of the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall    |
|we say to Harto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting     |
|the King of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are      |
|numerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems no reason |
|to doubt that if these elephants, which have now been hunted for thousands of   |
|years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all the successive monarchs  |
|of the East--if they still survive there in great numbers, much more may the    |
|great whale outlast all hunting, since he has a pasture to expatiate in, which  |
|is precisely twice as large as all Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New  |
|Holland, and all the Isles of the sea combined. Moreover: we are to consider,   |
|that from the presumed great longevity of whales, their probably attaining the  |
|age of a century and more, therefore at any one period of time, several distinct|
|adult generations must be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some |
|idea of, by imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family vaults of     |
|creation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and children who    |
|were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this countless host to the present|
|human population of the globe. Wherefore, for all these things, we account the  |
|whale immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. He swam |
|the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the   |
|Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he despised     |
|Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, |
|to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing    |
|upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance      |
|to the skies. The precipitating manner in which Captain Ahab had quitted the    |
|Samuel Enderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to   |
|his own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his boat that  |
|his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when after gaining     |
|his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so vehemently wheeled round      |
|with an urgent command to the steersman (it was, as ever, something about his   |
|not steering inflexibly enough); then, the already shaken ivory received such   |
|an additional twist and wrench, that though it still remained entire, and to    |
|all appearances lusty, yet Ahab did not deem it entirely trustworthy. And,      |
|indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his pervading, mad      |
|recklessness, Ahab did at times give careful heed to the condition of that dead |
|bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not been very long prior to the     |
|Pequod's sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone   |
|upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable,   |
|unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that  |
|it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without    |
|extreme difficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured. Nor, at the     |
|time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all the anguish of       |
|that then present suffering was but the direct issue of a former woe; and he    |
|too plainly seemed to see, that as the most poisonous reptile of the marsh      |
|perpetuates his kind as inevitably as the sweetest songster of the grove; so,   |
|equally with every felicity, all miserable events do naturally beget their like.|
|Yea, more than equally, thought Ahab; since both the ancestry and posterity of  |
|Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of    |
|this: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that while some   |
|natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them for the other world,|
|but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the joy-childlessness of all hell's  |
|despair; whereas, some guilty mortal miseries shall still fertilely beget to    |
|themselves an eternally progressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at  |
|all to hint of this, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of  |
|the thing. For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever    |
|have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all      |
|heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur;    |
|so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the obvious deduction. To trail     |
|the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the     |
|sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad,    |
|hay-making suns, and soft cymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give   |
|in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable,   |
|sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.   |
|Unwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more properly, |
|in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other particulars concerning  |
|Ahab, always had it remained a mystery to some, why it was, that for a certain  |
|period, both before and after the sailing of the Pequod, he had hidden himself  |
|away with such Grand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought|
|speechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead. Captain     |
|Peleg's bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means adequate; though,    |
|indeed, as touching all Ahab's deeper part, every revelation partook more of    |
|significant darkness than of explanatory light. But, in the end, it all came    |
|out; this one matter did, at least. That direful mishap was at the bottom of his|
|temporary recluseness. And not only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping|
|circle ashore, who, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned    |
|approach to him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty--remaining,     |
|as it did, moodily unaccounted for by Ahab--invested itself with terrors, not   |
|entirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that, through      |
|their zeal for him, they had all conspired, so far as in them lay, to muffle    |
|up the knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it was, that not till a   |
|considerable interval had elapsed, did it transpire upon the Pequod's decks.    |
|But be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air, or the   |
|vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not with earthly Ahab, |
|yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took plain practical procedures;--he |
|called the carpenter. And when that functionary appeared before him, he bade    |
|him without delay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see     |
|him supplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which     |
|had thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful selection  |
|of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured. This done, the        |
|carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that night; and to provide  |
|all the fittings for it, independent of those pertaining to the distrusted      |
|one in use. Moreover, the ship's forge was ordered to be hoisted out of its     |
|temporary idleness in the hold; and, to accelerate the affair, the blacksmith   |
|was commanded to proceed at once to the forging of whatever iron contrivances   |
|might be needed. Seat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take  |
|high abstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But    |
|from the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem     |
|a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. But most     |
|humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of the high, humane    |
|abstraction; the Pequod's carpenter was no duplicate; hence, he now comes in    |
|person on this stage. Like all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially   |
|those belonging to whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical  |
|extent, alike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his own;|
|the carpenter's pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk of all those   |
|numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with wood as an auxiliary    |
|material. But, besides the application to him of the generic remark above, this |
|carpenter of the Pequod was singularly efficient in those thousand nameless     |
|mechanical emergencies continually recurring in a large ship, upon a three      |
|or four years' voyage, in uncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak    |
|of his readiness in ordinary duties:--repairing stove boats, sprung spars,      |
|reforming the shape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull's eyes in the deck,   |
|or new tree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more      |
|directly pertaining to his special business; he was moreover unhesitatingly     |
|expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both useful and capricious.      |
|The one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold, was     |
|his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several vices, of    |
|different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times except when whales  |
|were alongside, this bench was securely lashed athwartships against the rear of |
|the Try-works. A belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its |
|hole: the carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and straightway  |
|files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage strays on board, and is   |
|made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of right-whale bone, and cross-beams   |
|of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter makes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An      |
|oarsman sprains his wrist: the carpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Stubb      |
|longed for vermillion stars to be painted upon the blade of his every oar;      |
|screwing each oar in his big vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies |
|the constellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the     |
|carpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out pincers,|
|and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there; but the poor     |
|fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded operation; whirling round the  |
|handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter signs him to clap his jaw in that,     |
|if he would have him draw the tooth. Thus, this carpenter was prepared at all   |
|points, and alike indifferent and without respect in all. Teeth he accounted    |
|bits of ivory; heads he deemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held   |
|for capstans. But while now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished    |
|and with such liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to      |
|argue some uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For nothing |
|was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal stolidity as it     |
|were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the surrounding infinite     |
|of things, that it seemed one with the general stolidity discernible in the     |
|whole visible world; which while pauselessly active in uncounted modes, still   |
|eternally holds its peace, and ignores you, though you dig foundations for      |
|cathedrals. Yet was this half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it  |
|appeared, an all-ramifying heartlessness;--yet was it oddly dashed at times,    |
|with an old, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked   |
|now and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have served to    |
|pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded forecastle of Noah's     |
|ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a life-long wanderer, whose much   |
|rolling, to and fro, not only had gathered no moss; but what is more, had       |
|rubbed off whatever small outward clingings might have originally pertained     |
|to him? He was a stript abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as    |
|a new-born babe; living without premeditated reference to this world or the     |
|next. You might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him involved |
|a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did not seem to work   |
|so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he had been tutored to      |
|it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or uneven; but merely by a kind   |
|of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal process. He was a pure manipulator; his   |
|brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles     |
|of his fingers. He was like one of those unreasoning but still highly useful,   |
|MULTUM IN PARVO, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior--though a little |
|swelled--of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of various   |
|sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers,       |
|nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted to use the carpenter   |
|for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to open that part of him, and the    |
|screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take him up by the legs, and there they     |
|were. Yet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter, was, |
|after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a common soul in |
|him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously did its duty. What that |
|was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few drops of hartshorn, there is no   |
|telling. But there it was; and there it had abided for now some sixty years or  |
|more. And this it was, this same unaccountable, cunning life-principle in him;  |
|this it was, that kept him a great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like|
|an unreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his body was|
|a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking all the time to  |
|keep himself awake. Drat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should |
|be soft, and that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and |
|shinbones. Let's try another. Aye, now, this works better (SNEEZES). Halloa,    |
|this bone dust is (SNEEZES)--why it's (SNEEZES)--yes it's (SNEEZES)--bless my   |
|soul, it won't let me speak! This is what an old fellow gets now for working in |
|dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and you don't get this dust; amputate a live bone,|
|and you don't get it (SNEEZES). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand,   |
|and let's have that ferule and buckle-screw; I'll be ready for them presently.  |
|Lucky now (SNEEZES) there's no knee-joint to make; that might puzzle a little;  |
|but a mere shinbone--why it's easy as making hop-poles; only I should like to   |
|put a good finish on. Time, time; if I but only had the time, I could turn him  |
|out as neat a leg now as ever (SNEEZES) scraped to a lady in a parlor. Those    |
|buckskin legs and calves of legs I've seen in shop windows wouldn't compare     |
|at all. They soak water, they do; and of course get rheumatic, and have to be   |
|doctored (SNEEZES) with washes and lotions, just like live legs. There; before  |
|I saw it off, now, I must call his old Mogulship, and see whether the length    |
|will be all right; too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that's the heel; we are |
|in luck; here he comes, or it's somebody else, that's certain. Well, manmaker!  |
|Just in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length. Let me   |
|measure, sir. Measured for a leg! good. Well, it's not the first time. About it!|
|There; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here, carpenter;  |
|let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some. Oh, sir, it will break   |
|bones--beware, beware! No fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something    |
|in this slippery world that can hold, man. What's Prometheus about there?--the  |
|blacksmith, I mean--what's he about? He must be forging the buckle-screw, sir,  |
|now. Right. It's a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a fierce  |
|red flame there! Aye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine    |
|work. Um-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old    |
|Greek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a blacksmith, and   |
|animated them with fire; for what's made in fire must properly belong to fire;  |
|and so hell's probable. How the soot flies! This must be the remainder the Greek|
|made the Africans of. Carpenter, when he's through with that buckle, tell him to|
|forge a pair of steel shoulder-blades; there's a pedlar aboard with a crushing  |
|pack. Sir? Hold; while Prometheus is about it, I'll order a complete man after a|
|desirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest modelled |
|after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to 'em, to stay in one place;    |
|then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all, brass forehead, and   |
|about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let me see--shall I order eyes to|
|see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards. |
|There, take the order, and away. Now, what's he speaking about, and who's he    |
|speaking to, I should like to know? Shall I keep standing here? (ASIDE). 'Tis   |
|but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here's one. No, no, no; I    |
|must have a lantern. Ho, ho! That's it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve  |
|my turn. What art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?      |
|Thrusted light is worse than presented pistols. I thought, sir, that you spoke  |
|to carpenter. Carpenter? why that's--but no;--a very tidy, and, I may say,      |
|an extremely gentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpenter;--or    |
|would'st thou rather work in clay? Sir?--Clay? clay, sir? That's mud; we leave  |
|clay to ditchers, sir. The fellow's impious! What art thou sneezing about? Bone |
|is rather dusty, sir. Take the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury   |
|thyself under living people's noses. Sir?--oh! ah!--I guess so;--yes--dear!     |
|Look ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good workmanlike    |
|workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for thy work, if, when   |
|I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall nevertheless feel another leg     |
|in the same identical place with it; that is, carpenter, my old lost leg; the   |
|flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst thou not drive that old Adam away? Truly,    |
|sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard something curious    |
|on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never entirely loses the feeling   |
|of his old spar, but it will be still pricking him at times. May I humbly ask   |
|if it be really so, sir? It is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place   |
|where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet     |
|two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there  |
|to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle? I should humbly call it a poser, sir. Hist,     |
|then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be    |
|invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest;  |
|aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary hours, then, dost    |
|thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold, don't speak! And if I still feel the smart of|
|my crushed leg, though it be now so long dissolved; then, why mayst not thou,   |
|carpenter, feel the fiery pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah! Good |
|Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over again; I think I   |
|didn't carry a small figure, sir. Look ye, pudding-heads should never grant     |
|premises.--How long before the leg is done? Perhaps an hour, sir. Bungle away at|
|it then, and bring it to me (TURNS TO GO). Oh, Life! Here I am, proud as Greek  |
|god, and yet standing debtor to this blockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be|
|that mortal inter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be  |
|free as air; and I'm down in the whole world's books. I am so rich, I could have|
|given bid for bid with the wealthiest Praetorians at the auction of the Roman   |
|empire (which was the world's); and yet I owe for the flesh in the tongue I brag|
|with. By heavens! I'll get a crucible, and into it, and dissolve myself down    |
|to one small, compendious vertebra. So. Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best  |
|of all, and Stubb always says he's queer; says nothing but that one sufficient  |
|little word queer; he's queer, says Stubb; he's queer--queer, queer; and keeps  |
|dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all the time--queer--sir--queer, queer, very queer.|
|And here's his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here's his bedfellow! has a    |
|stick of whale's jaw-bone for a wife! And this is his leg; he'll stand on this. |
|What was that now about one leg standing in three places, and all three places  |
|standing in one hell--how was that? Oh! I don't wonder he looked so scornful    |
|at me! I'm a sort of strange-thoughted sometimes, they say; but that's only     |
|haphazard-like. Then, a short, little old body like me, should never undertake  |
|to wade out into deep waters with tall, heron-built captains; the water chucks  |
|you under the chin pretty quick, and there's a great cry for life-boats. And    |
|here's the heron's leg! long and slim, sure enough! Now, for most folks one pair|
|of legs lasts a lifetime, and that must be because they use them mercifully,    |
|as a tender-hearted old lady uses her roly-poly old coach-horses. But Ahab; oh  |
|he's a hard driver. Look, driven one leg to death, and spavined the other for   |
|life, and now wears out bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a  |
|hand there with those screws, and let's finish it before the resurrection fellow|
|comes a-calling with his horn for all legs, true or false, as brewery-men go    |
|round collecting old beer barrels, to fill 'em up again. What a leg this is!    |
|It looks like a real live leg, filed down to nothing but the core; he'll be     |
|standing on this to-morrow; he'll be taking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost   |
|forgot the little oval slate, smoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. |
|So, so; chisel, file, and sand-paper, now! According to usage they were pumping |
|the ship next morning; and lo! no inconsiderable oil came up with the water; the|
|casks below must have sprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck   |
|went down into the cabin to report this unfavourable affair. In Sperm-whalemen  |
|with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it is a regular semiweekly duty |
|to conduct a hose into the hold, and drench the casks with sea-water; which     |
|afterwards, at varying intervals, is removed by the ship's pumps. Hereby the    |
|casks are sought to be kept damply tight; while by the changed character of the |
|withdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the precious|
|cargo. Now, from the South and West the Pequod was drawing nigh to Formosa and  |
|the Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from the China |
|waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Ahab with a general chart of the |
|oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and another separate one representing |
|the long eastern coasts of the Japanese islands--Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke.   |
|With his snow-white new ivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table,  |
|and with a long pruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, |
|with his back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his old  |
|courses again. "Who's there?" hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning |
|round to it. "On deck! Begone!" "Captain Ahab mistakes; it is I. The oil in the |
|hold is leaking, sir. We must up Burtons and break out." "Up Burtons and break  |
|out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here for a week to tinker a parcel |
|of old hoops?" "Either do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may   |
|make good in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth saving, |
|sir." "So it is, so it is; if we get it." "I was speaking of the oil in the     |
|hold, sir." "And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it  |
|leak! I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks,  |
|but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that's a far worse plight than   |
|the Pequod's, man. Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the |
|deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life's howling |
|gale? Starbuck! I'll not have the Burtons hoisted." "What will the owners say,  |
|sir?" "Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What   |
|cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those|
|miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But look ye, the only real |
|owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye, my conscience is in this ship's|
|keel.--On deck!" "Captain Ahab," said the reddening mate, moving further into   |
|the cabin, with a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost    |
|seemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward manifestation  |
|of itself, but within also seemed more than half distrustful of itself; "A      |
|better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would quickly enough     |
|resent in a younger man; aye, and in a happier, Captain Ahab." "Devils! Dost    |
|thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?--On deck!" "Nay, sir, not  |
|yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir--to be forbearing! Shall we not understand|
|each other better than hitherto, Captain Ahab?" Ahab seized a loaded musket from|
|the rack (forming part of most South-Sea-men's cabin furniture), and pointing   |
|it towards Starbuck, exclaimed: "There is one God that is Lord over the earth,  |
|and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.--On deck!" For an instant in the  |
|flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought  |
|that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his  |
|emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant|
|and said: "Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee    |
|not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; |
|beware of thyself, old man." "He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most      |
|careful bravery that!" murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. "What's that he  |
|said--Ahab beware of Ahab--there's something there!" Then unconsciously using   |
|the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little     |
|cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and returning    |
|the gun to the rack, he went to the deck. "Thou art but too good a fellow,      |
|Starbuck," he said lowly to the mate; then raising his voice to the crew: "Furl |
|the t'gallant-sails, and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the       |
|main-yard; up Burton, and break out in the main-hold." It were perhaps vain to  |
|surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting Starbuck, Ahab thus acted. It may|
|have been a flash of honesty in him; or mere prudential policy which, under the |
|circumstance, imperiously forbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection,   |
|however transient, in the important chief officer of his ship. However it was,  |
|his orders were executed; and the Burtons were hoisted. Upon searching, it was  |
|found that the casks last struck into the hold were perfectly sound, and that   |
|the leak must be further off. So, it being calm weather, they broke out deeper  |
|and deeper, disturbing the slumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from     |
|that black midnight sending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So    |
|deep did they go; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the     |
|lowermost puncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone   |
|cask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted placards,      |
|vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood. Tierce after tierce,    |
|too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of staves, and iron bundles of   |
|hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the piled decks were hard to get about;   |
|and the hollow hull echoed under foot, as if you were treading over empty       |
|catacombs, and reeled and rolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn.     |
|Top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head.  |
|Well was it that the Typhoons did not visit them then. Now, at this time it was |
|that my poor pagan companion, and fast bosom-friend, Queequeg, was seized with  |
|a fever, which brought him nigh to his endless end. Be it said, that in this    |
|vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; |
|till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil. So with    |
|poor Queequeg, who, as harpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living|
|whale, but--as we have elsewhere seen--mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and|
|finally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all day in    |
|that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the clumsiest casks and see|
|to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen, the harpooneers are the holders, |
|so called. Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should|
|have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped |
|to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that        |
|dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a  |
|well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to  |
|say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed |
|into a fever; and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, |
|close to the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in   |
|those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his |
|frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew   |
|sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became  |
|of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there  |
|from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which    |
|could not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they    |
|grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings  |
|of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by     |
|the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any   |
|beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous  |
|and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near |
|of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation,   |
|which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that--let us say   |
|it again--no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those,  |
|whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he  |
|quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking   |
|him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher   |
|and higher towards his destined heaven. Not a man of the crew but gave him      |
|up; and, as for Queequeg himself, what he thought of his case was forcibly      |
|shown by a curious favour he asked. He called one to him in the grey morning    |
|watch, when the day was just breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in  |
|Nantucket he had chanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the    |
|rich war-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all     |
|whalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes, and that   |
|the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was not unlike the      |
|custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead warrior, stretched him out  |
|in his canoe, and so left him to be floated away to the starry archipelagoes;   |
|for not only do they believe that the stars are isles, but that far beyond all  |
|visible horizons, their own mild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue   |
|heavens; and so form the white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he     |
|shuddered at the thought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual |
|sea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks. No: he    |
|desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial to him, being   |
|a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes were without a keel;     |
|though that involved but uncertain steering, and much lee-way adown the dim     |
|ages. Now, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter was |
|at once commanded to do Queequeg's bidding, whatever it might include. There was|
|some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard, which, upon a long previous |
|voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal groves of the Lackaday islands, and    |
|from these dark planks the coffin was recommended to be made. No sooner was the |
|carpenter apprised of the order, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the|
|indifferent promptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took|
|Queequeg's measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Queequeg's person as |
|he shifted the rule. "Ah! poor fellow! he'll have to die now," ejaculated the   |
|Long Island sailor. Going to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake |
|and general reference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the   |
|coffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two notches at|
|its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his tools, and to work.|
|When the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he lightly   |
|shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring whether they were     |
|ready for it yet in that direction. Overhearing the indignant but half-humorous |
|cries with which the people on deck began to drive the coffin away, Queequeg, to|
|every one's consternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought |
|to him, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some dying  |
|men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us  |
|so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged. Leaning over in  |
|his hammock, Queequeg long regarded the coffin with an attentive eye. He then   |
|called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock drawn from it, and then had the    |
|iron part placed in the coffin along with one of the paddles of his boat. All   |
|by his own request, also, biscuits were then ranged round the sides within: a   |
|flask of fresh water was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth     |
|scraped up in the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up   |
|for a pillow, Queequeg now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that he   |
|might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without moving a few    |
|minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo. Then|
|crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo between, he called for the coffin lid |
|(hatch he called it) to be placed over him. The head part turned over with a    |
|leather hinge, and there lay Queequeg in his coffin with little but his composed|
|countenance in view. "Rarmai" (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last,    |
|and signed to be replaced in his hammock. But ere this was done, Pip, who had   |
|been slily hovering near by all this while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and  |
|with soft sobbings, took him by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine. |
|"Poor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where go ye    |
|now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where the beaches     |
|are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little errand for me? Seek out  |
|one Pip, who's now been missing long: I think he's in those far Antilles. If    |
|ye find him, then comfort him; for he must be very sad; for look! he's left     |
|his tambourine behind;--I found it. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Queequeg, die;    |
|and I'll beat ye your dying march." "I have heard," murmured Starbuck, gazing   |
|down the scuttle, "that in violent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked      |
|in ancient tongues; and that when the mystery is probed, it turns out always    |
|that in their wholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really  |
|spoken in their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor Pip, |
|in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers of all our    |
|heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?--Hark! he speaks again: but   |
|more wildly now." "Form two and two! Let's make a General of him! Ho, where's   |
|his harpoon? Lay it across here.--Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game cock|
|now to sit upon his head and crow! Queequeg dies game!--mind ye that; Queequeg  |
|dies game!--take ye good heed of that; Queequeg dies game! I say; game, game,   |
|game! but base little Pip, he died a coward; died all a'shiver;--out upon       |
|Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the Antilles he's a runaway; a coward,   |
|a coward, a coward! Tell them he jumped from a whale-boat! I'd never beat my    |
|tambourine over base Pip, and hail him General, if he were once more dying      |
|here. No, no! shame upon all cowards--shame upon them! Let 'em go drown like    |
|Pip, that jumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!" During all this, Queequeg    |
|lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip was led away, and the sick man was  |
|replaced in his hammock. But now that he had apparently made every preparation  |
|for death; now that his coffin was proved a good fit, Queequeg suddenly rallied;|
|soon there seemed no need of the carpenter's box: and thereupon, when some      |
|expressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the cause of   |
|his sudden convalescence was this;--at a critical moment, he had just recalled  |
|a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone; and therefore had changed    |
|his mind about dying: he could not die yet, he averred. They asked him, then,   |
|whether to live or die was a matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He  |
|answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up|
|his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a   |
|gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort. Now, |
|there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized; that while a  |
|sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing, generally speaking, a sick  |
|savage is almost half-well again in a day. So, in good time my Queequeg gained  |
|strength; and at length after sitting on the windlass for a few indolent days   |
|(but eating with a vigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw     |
|out his arms and legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit,     |
|and then springing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon,    |
|pronounced himself fit for a fight. With a wild whimsiness, he now used his     |
|coffin for a sea-chest; and emptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them|
|in order there. Many spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner   |
|of grotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was striving,   |
|in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on his body. And this   |
|tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who,  |
|by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of   |
|the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining      |
|truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a      |
|wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read,   |
|though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore |
|destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they      |
|were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought it must have   |
|been which suggested to Ahab that wild exclamation of his, when one morning     |
|turning away from surveying poor Queequeg--"Oh, devilish tantalization of the   |
|gods!" When gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great South |
|Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear Pacific with    |
|uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my youth was answered; that  |
|serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a thousand leagues of blue. There is,     |
|one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings   |
|seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the |
|Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over     |
|these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all     |
|four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly;  |
|for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms,  |
|reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still;      |
|tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by    |
|their restlessness. To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once   |
|beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters |
|of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same waves  |
|wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday planted by the |
|recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic  |
|lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles,   |
|and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus    |
|this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all   |
|coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those    |
|eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to       |
|Pan. But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing like an iron     |
|statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one nostril he    |
|unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet      |
|woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the  |
|salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale must  |
|even then be swimming. Launched at length upon these almost final waters, and   |
|gliding towards the Japanese cruising-ground, the old man's purpose intensified |
|itself. His firm lips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead's  |
|veins swelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran     |
|through the vaulted hull, "Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick blood!"      |
|Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in these     |
|latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits shortly to be  |
|anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, had not removed     |
|his portable forge to the hold again, after concluding his contributory work    |
|for Ahab's leg, but still retained it on deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the  |
|foremast; being now almost incessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers,|
|and bowsmen to do some little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new      |
|shaping their various weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded  |
|by an eager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads,  |
|harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty movement, as he    |
|toiled. Nevertheless, this old man's was a patient hammer wielded by a patient  |
|arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petulance did come from him. Silent, slow,    |
|and solemn; bowing over still further his chronically broken back, he toiled    |
|away, as if toil were life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the      |
|heavy beating of his heart. And so it was.--Most miserable! A peculiar walk in  |
|this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing yawing in his gait, had    |
|at an early period of the voyage excited the curiosity of the mariners. And to  |
|the importunity of their persisted questionings he had finally given in; and    |
|so it came to pass that every one now knew the shameful story of his wretched   |
|fate. Belated, and not innocently, one bitter winter's midnight, on the road    |
|running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt the deadly |
|numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning, dilapidated barn.   |
|The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both feet. Out of this revelation,|
|part by part, at last came out the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, |
|and as yet uncatastrophied fifth act of the grief of his life's drama. He       |
|was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly encountered    |
|that thing in sorrow's technicals called ruin. He had been an artisan of        |
|famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house and garden; embraced a   |
|youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three blithe, ruddy children; every   |
|Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church, planted in a grove. But one night,    |
|under cover of darkness, and further concealed in a most cunning disguisement, a|
|desperate burglar slid into his happy home, and robbed them all of everything.  |
|And darker yet to tell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this      |
|burglar into his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening   |
|of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for  |
|prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the      |
|basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so that always    |
|had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but |
|with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed old husband's   |
|hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by passing through the floors and walls,  |
|came up to her, not unsweetly, in her nursery; and so, to stout Labor's iron    |
|lullaby, the blacksmith's infants were rocked to slumber. Oh, woe on woe!       |
|Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely? Hadst thou taken this old    |
|blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow |
|had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to     |
|dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency. But   |
|Death plucked down some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil   |
|solely hung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than  |
|useless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him easier   |
|to harvest. Why tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew |
|more and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the last; the  |
|wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes, glitteringly gazing into     |
|the weeping faces of her children; the bellows fell; the forge choked up with   |
|cinders; the house was sold; the mother dived down into the long church-yard    |
|grass; her children twice followed her thither; and the houseless, familyless   |
|old man staggered off a vagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his      |
|grey head a scorn to flaxen curls! Death seems the only desirable sequel for a  |
|career like this; but Death is only a launching into the region of the strange  |
|Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense     |
|Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes|
|of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions against     |
|suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean alluringly spread     |
|forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, and wonderful, new-life  |
|adventures; and from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids     |
|sing to them--"Come hither, broken-hearted; here is another life without the    |
|guilt of intermediate death; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for   |
|them. Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred   |
|and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put     |
|up THY gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till we marry   |
|thee!" Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by      |
|fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth went    |
|a-whaling. With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about|
|mid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter placed upon |
|an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with      |
|the other at his forge's lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in his   |
|hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the   |
|forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the    |
|fire, began hammering it upon the anvil--the red mass sending off the sparks in |
|thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab. "Are these thy Mother |
|Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen,|
|too, but not to all;--look here, they burn; but thou--thou liv'st among them    |
|without a scorch." "Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab," answered     |
|Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; "I am past scorching; not easily     |
|can'st thou scorch a scar." "Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too   |
|calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery|
|in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou|
|not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate   |
|thee, that thou can'st not go mad?--What wert thou making there?" "Welding an   |
|old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it." "And can'st thou make it |
|all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard usage as it had?" "I think so,    |
|sir." "And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never mind |
|how hard the metal, blacksmith?" "Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents  |
|but one." "Look ye here, then," cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning |
|with both hands on Perth's shoulders; "look ye here--HERE--can ye smoothe out   |
|a seam like this, blacksmith," sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; "if    |
|thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and  |
|feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this      |
|seam?" "Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?" "Aye,|
|blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for though thou only   |
|see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the bone of my skull--THAT  |
|is all wrinkles! But, away with child's play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day.   |
|Look ye here!" jingling the leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. "I, |
|too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part,    |
|Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There's the  |
|stuff," flinging the pouch upon the anvil. "Look ye, blacksmith, these are the  |
|gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses." "Horse-shoe stubbs,  |
|sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we |
|blacksmiths ever work." "I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together    |
|like glue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And  |
|forge me first, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer     |
|these twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I'll blow|
|the fire." When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, |
|by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. "A flaw!" |
|rejecting the last one. "Work that over again, Perth." This done, Perth was     |
|about to begin welding the twelve into one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said |
|he would weld his own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping hems, he hammered   |
|on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowing rods, one after the other, and   |
|the hard pressed forge shooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed|
|silently, and bowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse |
|or some blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside. "What's    |
|that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?" muttered Stubb, looking on     |
|from the forecastle. "That Parsee smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it    |
|himself, like a hot musket's powder-pan." At last the shank, in one complete    |
|rod, received its final heat; and as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing|
|into the cask of water near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent     |
|face. "Would'st thou brand me, Perth?" wincing for a moment with the pain; "have|
|I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?" "Pray God, not that; yet I fear |
|something, Captain Ahab. Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?" "For the     |
|white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them thyself, man. Here are  |
|my razors--the best of steel; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet|
|of the Icy Sea." For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he  |
|would fain not use them. "Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now    |
|neither shave, sup, nor pray till--but here--to work!" Fashioned at last into   |
|an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the shank, the steel soon pointed the   |
|end of the iron; and as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final   |
|heat, prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.   |
|"No, no--no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy, there!    |
|Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood  |
|as will cover this barb?" holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied,   |
|Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the White Whale's      |
|barbs were then tempered. "Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine   |
|diaboli!" deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured   |
|the baptismal blood. Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting   |
|one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the    |
|socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of|
|it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot   |
|upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, |
|and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and now for the seizings." At  |
|one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns were all   |
|braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole was then driven     |
|hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope was traced half-way along  |
|the pole's length, and firmly secured so, with intertwistings of twine. This    |
|done, pole, iron, and rope--like the Three Fates--remained inseparable, and     |
|Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and      |
|the sound of the hickory pole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But     |
|ere he entered his cabin, light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous    |
|sound was heard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all   |
|thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the     |
|melancholy ship, and mocked it! Penetrating further and further into the heart  |
|of the Japanese cruising ground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery.  |
|Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty     |
|hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or      |
|sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy  |
|minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success for their |
|pains. At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow     |
|heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably     |
|mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr    |
|against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the |
|tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart |
|that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw   |
|but conceals a remorseless fang. These are the times, when in his whale-boat    |
|the rover softly feels a certain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards   |
|the sea; that he regards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship      |
|revealing only the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through     |
|high rolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when    |
|the western emigrants' horses only show their erected ears, while their hidden  |
|bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure. The long-drawn virgin vales;    |
|the mild blue hill-sides; as over these there steals the hush, the hum; you     |
|almost swear that play-wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in     |
|some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this     |
|mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting,     |
|interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole. Nor did such soothing scenes,      |
|however temporary, fail of at least as temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these|
|secret golden keys did seem to open in him his own secret golden treasuries,    |
|yet did his breath upon them prove but tarnishing. Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever  |
|vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,--though long parched by the dead  |
|drought of the earthy life,--in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new  |
|morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life|
|immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, |
|mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms,   |
|a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life;   |
|we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause:--through |
|infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt    |
|(the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's|
|pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and    |
|are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor,     |
|whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the      |
|weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling's father hidden? Our souls    |
|are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret   |
|of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it. And that   |
|same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into that same golden sea,  |
|Starbuck lowly murmured:-- "Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his   |
|young bride's eye!--Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping  |
|cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and |
|do believe." And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that     |
|same golden light:-- "I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb     |
|takes oaths that he has always been jolly!" And jolly enough were the sights and|
|the sounds that came bearing down before the wind, some few weeks after Ahab's  |
|harpoon had been welded. It was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just  |
|wedged in her last cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now,  |
|in glad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously, sailing |
|round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous to pointing her  |
|prow for home. The three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red |
|bunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended, bottom down; |
|and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long lower jaw of the last   |
|whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks of all colours were flying    |
|from her rigging, on every side. Sideways lashed in each of her three basketed  |
|tops were two barrels of sperm; above which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you   |
|saw slender breakers of the same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck   |
|was a brazen lamp. As was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most|
|surprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in the same |
|seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without securing a single    |
|fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been given away to make room for   |
|the far more valuable sperm, but additional supplemental casks had been bartered|
|for, from the ships she had met; and these were stowed along the deck, and in   |
|the captain's and officers' state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had been   |
|knocked into kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an   |
|oil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the forecastle, the    |
|sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests, and filled them; it was  |
|humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and   |
|filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it;     |
|that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them;     |
|that indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's pantaloons   |
|pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent     |
|testimony of his entire satisfaction. As this glad ship of good luck bore down  |
|upon the moody Pequod, the barbarian sound of enormous drums came from her      |
|forecastle; and drawing still nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing     |
|round her huge try-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like POKE or stomach |
|skin of the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the clenched  |
|hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and harpooneers were dancing  |
|with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with them from the Polynesian Isles;   |
|while suspended in an ornamented boat, firmly secured aloft between the foremast|
|and mainmast, three Long Island negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale   |
|ivory, were presiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship's   |
|company were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from which the  |
|huge pots had been removed. You would have almost thought they were pulling     |
|down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries they raised, as the now useless brick |
|and mortar were being hurled into the sea. Lord and master over all this scene, |
|the captain stood erect on the ship's elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole  |
|rejoicing drama was full before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own    |
|individual diversion. And Ahab, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy |
|and black, with a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other's     |
|wakes--one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings as to   |
|things to come--their two captains in themselves impersonated the whole striking|
|contrast of the scene. "Come aboard, come aboard!" cried the gay Bachelor's     |
|commander, lifting a glass and a bottle in the air. "Hast seen the White        |
|Whale?" gritted Ahab in reply. "No; only heard of him; but don't believe in him |
|at all," said the other good-humoredly. "Come aboard!" "Thou art too damned     |
|jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?" "Not enough to speak of--two islanders,     |
|that's all;--but come aboard, old hearty, come along. I'll soon take that       |
|black from your brow. Come along, will ye (merry's the play); a full ship and   |
|homeward-bound." "How wondrous familiar is a fool!" muttered Ahab; then aloud,  |
|"Thou art a full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an    |
|empty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward there!  |
|Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!" And thus, while the one ship went      |
|cheerily before the breeze, the other stubbornly fought against it; and so the  |
|two vessels parted; the crew of the Pequod looking with grave, lingering glances|
|towards the receding Bachelor; but the Bachelor's men never heeding their gaze  |
|for the lively revelry they were in. And as Ahab, leaning over the taffrail,    |
|eyed the homewardbound craft, he took from his pocket a small vial of sand,     |
|and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed thereby bringing two remote  |
|associations together, for that vial was filled with Nantucket soundings. Not   |
|seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favourites sail close   |
|by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and  |
|joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed it with the Pequod. For     |
|next day after encountering the gay Bachelor, whales were seen and four were    |
|slain; and one of them by Ahab. It was far down the afternoon; and when all the |
|spearings of the crimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset     |
|sea and sky, sun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness    |
|and such plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy air,    |
|that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent valleys of the |
|Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned sailor, had gone to sea,|
|freighted with these vesper hymns. Soothed again, but only soothed to deeper    |
|gloom, Ahab, who had sterned off from the whale, sat intently watching his final|
|wanings from the now tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in    |
|all sperm whales dying--the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring--that |
|strange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Ahab conveyed a  |
|wondrousness unknown before. "He turns and turns him to it,--how slowly, but    |
|how steadfastly, his homage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying    |
|motions. He too worships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the     |
|sun!--Oh that these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.   |
|Look! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these     |
|most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets;   |
|where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and    |
|unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the Niger's unknown source; here, too,    |
|life dies sunwards full of faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls    |
|round the corpse, and it heads some other way. "Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of    |
|nature, who of drowned bones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the  |
|heart of these unverdured seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly  |
|speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its   |
|after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone|
|round again, without a lesson to me. "Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power!|
|Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!--that one strivest, this one jettest all in   |
|vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening    |
|sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker  |
|half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings  |
|float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled    |
|as air, but water now. "Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal       |
|tossings the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the   |
|sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!" The|
|four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to windward; one,  |
|less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These last three were brought  |
|alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one could not be reached till morning;|
|and the boat that had killed it lay by its side all night; and that boat was    |
|Ahab's. The waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale's spout-hole; and  |
|the lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon the     |
|black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which gently chafed    |
|the whale's broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach. Ahab and all his boat's   |
|crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who crouching in the bow, sat watching the   |
|sharks, that spectrally played round the whale, and tapped the light cedar      |
|planks with their tails. A sound like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites |
|of unforgiven ghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air. Started from  |
|his slumbers, Ahab, face to face, saw the Parsee; and hooped round by the gloom |
|of the night they seemed the last men in a flooded world. "I have dreamed it    |
|again," said he. "Of the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse |
|nor coffin can be thine?" "And who are hearsed that die on the sea?" "But I     |
|said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two hearses must       |
|verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by mortal hands; and the  |
|visible wood of the last one must be grown in America." "Aye, aye! a strange    |
|sight that, Parsee:--a hearse and its plumes floating over the ocean with the   |
|waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a sight we shall not soon see." "Believe   |
|it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man." "And what was that     |
|saying about thyself?" "Though it come to the last, I shall still go before     |
|thee thy pilot." "And when thou art so gone before--if that ever befall--then   |
|ere I can follow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?--Was it not  |
|so? Well, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two pledges  |
|that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it." "Take another pledge, old man,"|
|said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like fire-flies in the gloom--"Hemp     |
|only can kill thee." "The gallows, ye mean.--I am immortal then, on land and    |
|on sea," cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision;--"Immortal on land and on sea!"  |
|Both were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and the slumbering   |
|crew arose from the boat's bottom, and ere noon the dead whale was brought      |
|to the ship. The season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when    |
|Ahab, coming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would   |
|ostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to the     |
|braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed on the nailed |
|doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship's prow for the equator. In  |
|good time the order came. It was hard upon high noon; and Ahab, seated in the   |
|bows of his high-hoisted boat, was about taking his wonted daily observation of |
|the sun to determine his latitude. Now, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer|
|are as freshets of effulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the  |
|blazing focus of the glassy ocean's immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks   |
|lacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this nakedness of     |
|unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of God's throne. Well that |
|Ahab's quadrant was furnished with coloured glasses, through which to take      |
|sight of that solar fire. So, swinging his seated form to the roll of the ship, |
|and with his astrological-looking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in  |
|that posture for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun should  |
|gain its precise meridian. Meantime while his whole attention was absorbed, the |
|Parsee was kneeling beneath him on the ship's deck, and with face thrown up     |
|like Ahab's, was eyeing the same sun with him; only the lids of his eyes half   |
|hooded their orbs, and his wild face was subdued to an earthly passionlessness. |
|At length the desired observation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory |
|leg, Ahab soon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant.    |
|Then falling into a moment's revery, he again looked up towards the sun and     |
|murmured to himself: "Thou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou tellest   |
|me truly where I AM--but canst thou cast the least hint where I SHALL be? Or    |
|canst thou tell where some other thing besides me is this moment living? Where  |
|is Moby Dick? This instant thou must be eyeing him. These eyes of mine look     |
|into the very eye that is even now beholding him; aye, and into the eye that is |
|even now equally beholding the objects on the unknown, thither side of thee,    |
|thou sun!" Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its  |
|numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: "Foolish   |
|toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the   |
|world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do,|
|but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this    |
|wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not |
|tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and   |
|yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain   |
|toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven,    |
|whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched  |
|with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances  |
|of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to  |
|gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!" dashing it to the deck, "no  |
|longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's compass, and the   |
|level deadreckoning, by log and by line; THESE shall conduct me, and show me my |
|place on the sea. Aye," lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on  |
|thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy  |
|thee!" As the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live and    |
|dead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Ahab, and a fatalistic      |
|despair that seemed meant for himself--these passed over the mute, motionless   |
|Parsee's face. Unobserved he rose and glided away; while, awestruck by the      |
|aspect of their commander, the seamen clustered together on the forecastle, till|
|Ahab, troubledly pacing the deck, shouted out--"To the braces! Up helm!--square |
|in!" In an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon     |
|her heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon her long,    |
|ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one sufficient steed.   |
|Standing between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Pequod's tumultuous     |
|way, and Ahab's also, as he went lurching along the deck. "I have sat before    |
|the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its tormented flaming     |
|life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of  |
|oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one     |
|little heap of ashes!" "Aye," cried Stubb, "but sea-coal ashes--mind ye that,   |
|Mr. Starbuck--sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well; I heard Ahab      |
|mutter, 'Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears |
|that I must play them, and no others.' And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right;|
|live in the game, and die in it!" Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: |
|the tiger of Bengal crouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the   |
|most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes |
|that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent |
|Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It  |
|will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a |
|dazed and sleepy town. Towards evening of that day, the Pequod was torn of her  |
|canvas, and bare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly|
|ahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the thunder, and|
|blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts fluttering here and   |
|there with the rags which the first fury of the tempest had left for its after  |
|sport. Holding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at every |
|flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional disaster might    |
|have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Stubb and Flask were directing  |
|the men in the higher hoisting and firmer lashing of the boats. But all their   |
|pains seemed naught. Though lifted to the very top of the cranes, the windward  |
|quarter boat (Ahab's) did not escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up      |
|against the reeling ship's high teetering side, stove in the boat's bottom at   |
|the stern, and left it again, all dripping through like a sieve. "Bad work, bad |
|work! Mr. Starbuck," said Stubb, regarding the wreck, "but the sea will have its|
|way. Stubb, for one, can't fight it. You see, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a   |
|great long start before it leaps, all round the world it runs, and then comes   |
|the spring! But as for me, all the start I have to meet it, is just across the  |
|deck here. But never mind; it's all in fun: so the old song says;"--(SINGS.) Oh!|
|jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A' flourishin' his tail,-- Such a  |
|funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! The scud all |
|a flyin', That's his flip only foamin'; When he stirs in the spicin',-- Such    |
|a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! Thunder    |
|splits the ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin' of this flip,-- Such   |
|a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh! "Avast     |
|Stubb," cried Starbuck, "let the Typhoon sing, and strike his harp here in our  |
|rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold thy peace." "But I am not a |
|brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I sing to keep up   |
|my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there's no way to stop my  |
|singing in this world but to cut my throat. And when that's done, ten to one    |
|I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up." "Madman! look through my eyes if thou    |
|hast none of thine own." "What! how can you see better of a dark night than     |
|anybody else, never mind how foolish?" "Here!" cried Starbuck, seizing Stubb    |
|by the shoulder, and pointing his hand towards the weather bow, "markest thou   |
|not that the gale comes from the eastward, the very course Ahab is to run for   |
|Moby Dick? the very course he swung to this day noon? now mark his boat there;  |
|where is that stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is wont to stand--his   |
|stand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and sing away, if thou must! "I  |
|don't half understand ye: what's in the wind?" "Yes, yes, round the Cape of Good|
|Hope is the shortest way to Nantucket," soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless|
|of Stubb's question. "The gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn  |
|it into a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward, all   |
|is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward--I see it lightens up there; but |
|not with the lightning." At that moment in one of the intervals of profound     |
|darkness, following the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at   |
|the same instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead. "Who's there?" "Old |
|Thunder!" said Ahab, groping his way along the bulwarks to his pivot-hole; but  |
|suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed lances of fire. Now, as  |
|the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off the perilous     |
|fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea some ships carry to each   |
|mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But as this conductor must      |
|descend to considerable depth, that its end may avoid all contact with the hull;|
|and as moreover, if kept constantly towing there, it would be liable to many    |
|mishaps, besides interfering not a little with some of the rigging, and more    |
|or less impeding the vessel's way in the water; because of all this, the lower  |
|parts of a ship's lightning-rods are not always overboard; but are generally    |
|made in long slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the     |
|chains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require. "The rods!|
|the rods!" cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished to vigilance by the  |
|vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post.|
|"Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and aft. Quick!" "Avast!" cried Ahab; |
|"let's have fair play here, though we be the weaker side. Yet I'll contribute   |
|to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that all the world may be secured;    |
|but out on privileges! Let them be, sir." "Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The    |
|corpusants! the corpusants! All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire;   |
|and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white     |
|flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous    |
|air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar. "Blast the boat! let it    |
|go!" cried Stubb at this instant, as a swashing sea heaved up under his own     |
|little craft, so that its gunwale violently jammed his hand, as he was passing  |
|a lashing. "Blast it!"--but slipping backward on the deck, his uplifted eyes    |
|caught the flames; and immediately shifting his tone he cried--"The corpusants  |
|have mercy on us all!" To sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear   |
|in the trance of the calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate |
|curses from the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething sea;|
|but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when God's burning   |
|finger has been laid on the ship; when His "Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin" has     |
|been woven into the shrouds and the cordage. While this pallidness was burning  |
|aloft, few words were heard from the enchanted crew; who in one thick cluster   |
|stood on the forecastle, all their eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence,  |
|like a far away constellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the |
|gigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and seemed    |
|the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted mouth of Tashtego   |
|revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely gleamed as if they too had      |
|been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by the preternatural light, Queequeg's  |
|tattooing burned like Satanic blue flames on his body. The tableau all waned    |
|at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more the Pequod and every soul on   |
|her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment or two passed, when Starbuck, going  |
|forward, pushed against some one. It was Stubb. "What thinkest thou now, man;   |
|I heard thy cry; it was not the same in the song." "No, no, it wasn't; I said   |
|the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I hope they will, still. But do they   |
|only have mercy on long faces?--have they no bowels for a laugh? And look ye,   |
|Mr. Starbuck--but it's too dark to look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head   |
|flame we saw for a sign of good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that |
|is going to be chock a' block with sperm-oil, d'ye see; and so, all that sperm  |
|will work up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will      |
|yet be as three spermaceti candles--that's the good promise we saw." At that    |
|moment Starbuck caught sight of Stubb's face slowly beginning to glimmer into   |
|sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: "See! see!" and once more the high tapering  |
|flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled supernaturalness in their pallor. |
|"The corpusants have mercy on us all," cried Stubb, again. At the base of the   |
|mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame, the Parsee was kneeling in   |
|Ahab's front, but with his head bowed away from him; while near by, from the    |
|arched and overhanging rigging, where they had just been engaged securing a     |
|spar, a number of the seamen, arrested by the glare, now cohered together, and  |
|hung pendulous, like a knot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig.      |
|In various enchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running      |
|skeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all their     |
|eyes upcast. "Aye, aye, men!" cried Ahab. "Look up at it; mark it well; the     |
|white flame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast links |
|there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against it; blood against|
|fire! So." Then turning--the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his   |
|foot upon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm, he   |
|stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames. "Oh! thou clear     |
|spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till    |
|in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar;    |
|I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is    |
|defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate    |
|thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I    |
|own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life |
|will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the   |
|personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best;  |
|whencesoe'er I came; wheresoe'er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly    |
|personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate  |
|is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at |
|thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of   |
|full-freighted worlds, there's that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, |
|thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire,   |
|I breathe it back to thee." [SUDDEN, REPEATED FLASHES OF LIGHTNING; THE NINE    |
|FLAMES LEAP LENGTHWISE TO THRICE THEIR PREVIOUS HEIGHT; AHAB, WITH THE REST,    |
|CLOSES HIS EYES, HIS RIGHT HAND PRESSED HARD UPON THEM.] "I own thy speechless, |
|placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop     |
|these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but    |
|I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I   |
|would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache  |
|and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning |
|ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be,   |
|thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping   |
|out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! |
|Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery |
|father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her?   |
|There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence |
|callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest  |
|thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou |
|omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to  |
|whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through     |
|thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling    |
|fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy      |
|unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap |
|up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded  |
|with thee; defyingly I worship thee!" "The boat! the boat!" cried Starbuck,     |
|"look at thy boat, old man!" Ahab's harpoon, the one forged at Perth's fire,    |
|remained firmly lashed in its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond   |
|his whale-boat's bow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the      |
|loose leather sheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a |
|levelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there like a  |
|serpent's tongue, Starbuck grasped Ahab by the arm--"God, God is against thee,  |
|old man; forbear! 'tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill continued; let me square   |
|the yards, while we may, old man, and make a fair wind of it homewards, to go   |
|on a better voyage than this." Overhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew    |
|instantly ran to the braces--though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment   |
|all the aghast mate's thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry.  |
|But dashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the burning |
|harpoon, Ahab waved it like a torch among them; swearing to transfix with it    |
|the first sailor that but cast loose a rope's end. Petrified by his aspect, and |
|still more shrinking from the fiery dart that he held, the men fell back in     |
|dismay, and Ahab again spoke:-- "All your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as  |
|binding as mine; and heart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Ahab is bound.  |
|And that ye may know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow   |
|out the last fear!" And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the flame. |
|As in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of some     |
|lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it so much the    |
|more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for thunderbolts; so at those last |
|words of Ahab's many of the mariners did run from him in a terror of dismay. We |
|must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working loose and the   |
|lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?" "Strike nothing; lash it.   |
|If I had sky-sail poles, I'd sway them up now." "Sir!--in God's name!--sir?"    |
|"Well." "The anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?" "Strike       |
|nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises, but it has      |
|not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.--By masts and keels!    |
|he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some coasting smack. Send down my   |
|main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest trucks were made for wildest winds,  |
|and this brain-truck of mine now sails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike      |
|that? Oh, none but cowards send down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a |
|hooroosh aloft there! I would e'en take it for sublime, did I not know that the |
|colic is a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!" No, Stubb; you may  |
|pound that knot there as much as you please, but you will never pound into me   |
|what you were just now saying. And how long ago is it since you said the very   |
|contrary? Didn't you once say that whatever ship Ahab sails in, that ship should|
|pay something extra on its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with |
|powder barrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn't you say so?"|
|"Well, suppose I did? What then? I've part changed my flesh since that time,    |
|why not my mind? Besides, supposing we ARE loaded with powder barrels aft and   |
|lucifers forward; how the devil could the lucifers get afire in this drenching  |
|spray here? Why, my little man, you have pretty red hair, but you couldn't get  |
|afire now. Shake yourself; you're Aquarius, or the water-bearer, Flask; might   |
|fill pitchers at your coat collar. Don't you see, then, that for these extra    |
|risks the Marine Insurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hydrants,  |
|Flask. But hark, again, and I'll answer ye the other thing. First take your     |
|leg off from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass the rope; now  |
|listen. What's the mighty difference between holding a mast's lightning-rod in  |
|the storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn't got any lightning-rod at    |
|all in a storm? Don't you see, you timber-head, that no harm can come to the    |
|holder of the rod, unless the mast is first struck? What are you talking about, |
|then? Not one ship in a hundred carries rods, and Ahab,--aye, man, and all of   |
|us,--were in no more danger then, in my poor opinion, than all the crews in ten |
|thousand ships now sailing the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose you     |
|would have every man in the world go about with a small lightning-rod running up|
|the corner of his hat, like a militia officer's skewered feather, and trailing  |
|behind like his sash. Why don't ye be sensible, Flask? it's easy to be sensible;|
|why don't ye, then? any man with half an eye can be sensible." "I don't know    |
|that, Stubb. You sometimes find it rather hard." "Yes, when a fellow's soaked   |
|through, it's hard to be sensible, that's a fact. And I am about drenched with  |
|this spray. Never mind; catch the turn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are   |
|lashing down these anchors now as if they were never going to be used again.    |
|Tying these two anchors here, Flask, seems like tying a man's hands behind him. |
|And what big generous hands they are, to be sure. These are your iron fists,    |
|hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Flask, whether the world is anchored |
|anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long cable, though. There,     |
|hammer that knot down, and we've done. So; next to touching land, lighting on   |
|deck is the most satisfactory. I say, just wring out my jacket skirts, will ye? |
|Thank ye. They laugh at long-togs so, Flask; but seems to me, a Long tailed coat|
|ought always to be worn in all storms afloat. The tails tapering down that way, |
|serve to carry off the water, d'ye see. Same with cocked hats; the cocks form   |
|gable-end eave-troughs, Flask. No more monkey-jackets and tarpaulins for me;    |
|I must mount a swallow-tail, and drive down a beaver; so. Halloa! whew! there   |
|goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord, Lord, that the winds that come from heaven   |
|should be so unmannerly! This is a nasty night, lad." "Um, um, um. Stop that    |
|thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What's the use of thunder? Um, um,    |
|um. We don't want thunder; we want rum; give us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!"    |
|During the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Pequod's jaw-bone |
|tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by its spasmodic     |
|motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached to it--for they were   |
|slack--because some play to the tiller was indispensable. In a severe gale      |
|like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock to the blast, it is by    |
|no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round   |
|and round. It was thus with the Pequod's; at almost every shock the helmsman    |
|had not failed to notice the whirling velocity with which they revolved upon    |
|the cards; it is a sight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort of     |
|unwonted emotion. Some hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that   |
|through the strenuous exertions of Starbuck and Stubb--one engaged forward and  |
|the other aft--the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails were|
|cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like the feathers  |
|of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds when that storm-tossed   |
|bird is on the wing. The three corresponding new sails were now bent and        |
|reefed, and a storm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went     |
|through the water with some precision again; and the course--for the present,   |
|East-south-east--which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more given to  |
|the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had only steered according|
|to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing the ship as near her course     |
|as possible, watching the compass meanwhile, lo! a good sign! the wind seemed   |
|coming round astern; aye, the foul breeze became fair! Instantly the yards were |
|squared, to the lively song of "HO! THE FAIR WIND! OH-YE-HO, CHEERLY MEN!" the  |
|crew singing for joy, that so promising an event should so soon have falsified  |
|the evil portents preceding it. In compliance with the standing order of his    |
|commander--to report immediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any  |
|decided change in the affairs of the deck,--Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the  |
|yards to the breeze--however reluctantly and gloomily,--than he mechanically    |
|went below to apprise Captain Ahab of the circumstance. Ere knocking at his     |
|state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a moment. The cabin lamp--taking  |
|long swings this way and that--was burning fitfully, and casting fitful shadows |
|upon the old man's bolted door,--a thin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in     |
|place of upper panels. The isolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a       |
|certain humming silence to reign there, though it was hooped round by all the   |
|roar of the elements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as|
|they stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an honest, upright|
|man; but out of Starbuck's heart, at that instant when he saw the muskets,      |
|there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so blent with its neutral or good  |
|accompaniments that for the instant he hardly knew it for itself. "He would have|
|shot me once," he murmured, "yes, there's the very musket that he pointed at    |
|me;--that one with the studded stock; let me touch it--lift it. Strange, that   |
|I, who have handled so many deadly lances, strange, that I should shake so now. |
|Loaded? I must see. Aye, aye; and powder in the pan;--that's not good. Best     |
|spill it?--wait. I'll cure myself of this. I'll hold the musket boldly while I  |
|think.--I come to report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and   |
|doom,--THAT'S fair for Moby Dick. It's a fair wind that's only fair for that    |
|accursed fish.--The very tube he pointed at me!--the very one; THIS one--I hold |
|it here; he would have killed me with the very thing I handle now.--Aye and he  |
|would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say he will not strike his spars to   |
|any gale? Has he not dashed his heavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous   |
|seas, gropes he not his way by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log?  |
|and in this very Typhoon, did he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods?|
|But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship's company |
|down to doom with him?--Yes, it would make him the wilful murderer of thirty men|
|and more, if this ship come to any deadly harm; and come to deadly harm, my soul|
|swears this ship will, if Ahab have his way. If, then, he were this instant--put|
|aside, that crime would not be his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just |
|there,--in there, he's sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake |
|again. I can't withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance;  |
|not entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest. Flat obedience to    |
|thy own flat commands, this is all thou breathest. Aye, and say'st the men have |
|vow'd thy vow; say'st all of us are Ahabs. Great God forbid!--But is there no   |
|other way? no lawful way?--Make him a prisoner to be taken home? What! hope to  |
|wrest this old man's living power from his own living hands? Only a fool would  |
|try it. Say he were pinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers;     |
|chained down to ring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more hideous than   |
|a caged tiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his   |
|howlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leave me on the   |
|long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The land is hundreds of leagues   |
|away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone here upon an open sea, with   |
|two oceans and a whole continent between me and law.--Aye, aye, 'tis so.--Is    |
|heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed,    |
|tindering sheets and skin together?--And would I be a murderer, then, if"--and  |
|slowly, stealthily, and half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket's    |
|end against the door. "On this level, Ahab's hammock swings within; his head    |
|this way. A touch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.--Oh|
|Mary! Mary!--boy! boy! boy!--But if I wake thee not to death, old man, who can  |
|tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck's body this day week may sink, with all   |
|the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall I?--The wind has gone down  |
|and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails are reefed and set; she heads      |
|her course." "Stern all! Oh Moby Dick, I clutch thy heart at last!" Such were   |
|the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man's tormented sleep, as    |
|if Starbuck's voice had caused the long dumb dream to speak. The yet levelled   |
|musket shook like a drunkard's arm against the panel; Starbuck seemed wrestling |
|with an angel; but turning from the door, he placed the death-tube in its rack, |
|and left the place. "He's too sound asleep, Mr. Stubb; go thou down, and wake   |
|him, and tell him. I must see to the deck here. Thou know'st what to say." Next |
|morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk,    |
|and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms   |
|outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed |
|vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the  |
|full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity    |
|of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of    |
|crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as    |
|a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat. Long      |
|maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time the tetering |
|ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright sun's    |
|rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he turned    |
|behind, and saw the sun's rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were     |
|blending with his undeviating wake. "Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be     |
|taken now for the sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my      |
|prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I    |
|drive the sea!" But suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried    |
|towards the helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading. "East-sou-east,   |
|sir," said the frightened steersman. "Thou liest!" smiting him with his clenched|
|fist. "Heading East at this hour in the morning, and the sun astern?" Upon this |
|every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then observed by Ahab had    |
|unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very blinding palpableness must   |
|have been the cause. Thrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Ahab caught |
|one glimpse of the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he     |
|almost seemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two  |
|compasses pointed East, and the Pequod was as infallibly going West. But ere the|
|first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the old man with a rigid  |
|laugh exclaimed, "I have it! It has happened before. Mr. Starbuck, last night's |
|thunder turned our compasses--that's all. Thou hast before now heard of such    |
|a thing, I take it." "Aye; but never before has it happened to me, sir," said   |
|the pale mate, gloomily. Here, it must needs be said, that accidents like this  |
|have in more than one case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic    |
|energy, as developed in the mariner's needle, is, as all know, essentially one  |
|with the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much marvelled at, |
|that such things should be. Instances where the lightning has actually struck   |
|the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars and rigging, the effect       |
|upon the needle has at times been still more fatal; all its loadstone virtue    |
|being annihilated, so that the before magnetic steel was of no more use than    |
|an old wife's knitting needle. But in either case, the needle never again, of   |
|itself, recovers the original virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle   |
|compasses be affected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in      |
|the ship; even were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson. Deliberately    |
|standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed compasses, the old    |
|man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took the precise bearing of the   |
|sun, and satisfied that the needles were exactly inverted, shouted out his      |
|orders for the ship's course to be changed accordingly. The yards were hard     |
|up; and once more the Pequod thrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind,  |
|for the supposed fair one had only been juggling her. Meanwhile, whatever were  |
|his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said nothing, but quietly he issued all       |
|requisite orders; while Stubb and Flask--who in some small degree seemed then   |
|to be sharing his feelings--likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men,  |
|though some of them lowly rumbled, their fear of Ahab was greater than their    |
|fear of Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost wholly  |
|unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain magnetism shot into    |
|their congenial hearts from inflexible Ahab's. For a space the old man walked   |
|the deck in rolling reveries. But chancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw  |
|the crushed copper sight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to  |
|the deck. "Thou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun's pilot! yesterday I wrecked   |
|thee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But Ahab     |
|is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck--a lance without a pole;     |
|a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker's needles. Quick!" Accessory,    |
|perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about to do, were certain|
|prudential motives, whose object might have been to revive the spirits of his   |
|crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a matter so wondrous as that of the   |
|inverted compasses. Besides, the old man well knew that to steer by transpointed|
|needles, though clumsily practicable, was not a thing to be passed over by      |
|superstitious sailors, without some shudderings and evil portents. "Men,"       |
|said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him the things he   |
|had demanded, "my men, the thunder turned old Ahab's needles; but out of this   |
|bit of steel Ahab can make one of his own, that will point as true as any."     |
|Abashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was    |
|said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. But    |
|Starbuck looked away. With a blow from the top-maul Ahab knocked off the steel  |
|head of the lance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining,    |
|bade him hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the maul,   |
|after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he placed the blunted  |
|needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly hammered that, several       |
|times, the mate still holding the rod as before. Then going through some small  |
|strange motions with it--whether indispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, |
|or merely intended to augment the awe of the crew, is uncertain--he called      |
|for linen thread; and moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed      |
|needles there, and horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over   |
|one of the compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering   |
|and vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when Ahab,    |
|who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly back from the   |
|binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it, exclaimed,--"Look ye, for  |
|yourselves, if Ahab be not lord of the level loadstone! The sun is East, and    |
|that compass swears it!" One after another they peered in, for nothing but      |
|their own eyes could persuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another   |
|they slunk away. In his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Ahab in   |
|all his fatal pride. While now the fated Pequod had been so long afloat this    |
|voyage, the log and line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident  |
|reliance upon other means of determining the vessel's place, some merchantmen,  |
|and many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave the log;   |
|though at the same time, and frequently more for form's sake than anything      |
|else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the course steered by the |
|ship, as well as the presumed average rate of progression every hour. It had    |
|been thus with the Pequod. The wooden reel and angular log attached hung, long  |
|untouched, just beneath the railing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had  |
|damped it; sun and wind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a   |
|thing that hung so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Ahab, as he  |
|happened to glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet scene, and he |
|remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his frantic oath about the|
|level log and line. The ship was sailing plungingly; astern the billows rolled  |
|in riots. "Forward, there! Heave the log!" Two seamen came. The golden-hued     |
|Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman. "Take the reel, one of ye, I'll heave."       |
|They went towards the extreme stern, on the ship's lee side, where the deck,    |
|with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into the creamy,    |
|sidelong-rushing sea. The Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the |
|projecting handle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved,  |
|so stood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Ahab advanced to him.     |
|Ahab stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty turns to  |
|form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old Manxman, who was   |
|intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to speak. "Sir, I mistrust it; |
|this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have spoiled it." "'Twill hold, old |
|gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee? Thou seem'st to hold.     |
|Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it." "I hold the spool, sir. But   |
|just as my captain says. With these grey hairs of mine 'tis not worth while     |
|disputing, 'specially with a superior, who'll ne'er confess." "What's that?     |
|There now's a patched professor in Queen Nature's granite-founded College; but  |
|methinks he's too subservient. Where wert thou born?" "In the little rocky Isle |
|of Man, sir." "Excellent! Thou'st hit the world by that." "I know not, sir, but |
|I was born there." "In the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it's good.    |
|Here's a man from Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned     |
|of Man; which is sucked in--by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall     |
|butts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So." The log was heaved. The     |
|loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long dragging line astern, and then,  |
|instantly, the reel began to whirl. In turn, jerkingly raised and lowered by    |
|the rolling billows, the towing resistance of the log caused the old reelman    |
|to stagger strangely. "Hold hard!" Snap! the overstrained line sagged down in   |
|one long festoon; the tugging log was gone. "I crush the quadrant, the thunder  |
|turns the needles, and now the mad sea parts the log-line. But Ahab can mend    |
|all. Haul in here, Tahitian; reel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter   |
|make another log, and mend thou the line. See to it." "There he goes now; to    |
|him nothing's happened; but to me, the skewer seems loosening out of the middle |
|of the world. Haul in, haul in, Tahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling   |
|out: come in broken, and dragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?" "Pip?  |
|whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip's missing. Let's see      |
|now if ye haven't fished him up here, fisherman. It drags hard; I guess he's    |
|holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul in no cowards here. Ho!     |
|there's his arm just breaking water. A hatchet! a hatchet! cut it off--we       |
|haul in no cowards here. Captain Ahab! sir, sir! here's Pip, trying to get on   |
|board again." "Peace, thou crazy loon," cried the Manxman, seizing him by the   |
|arm. "Away from the quarter-deck!" "The greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,"  |
|muttered Ahab, advancing. "Hands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip  |
|was, boy? "Astern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!" "And who art thou, boy? I see not|
|my reflection in the vacant pupils of thy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a    |
|thing for immortal souls to sieve through! Who art thou, boy?" "Bell-boy, sir;  |
|ship's-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One hundred pounds of clay reward|
|for Pip; five feet high--looks cowardly--quickest known by that! Ding, dong,    |
|ding! Who's seen Pip the coward?" "There can be no hearts above the snow-line.  |
|Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and    |
|have abandoned him, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Ahab's cabin shall be    |
|Pip's home henceforth, while Ahab lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy;   |
|thou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let's down."      |
|"What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand, and    |
|feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he |
|had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a man-rope; something that weak  |
|souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands    |
|together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go." "Oh, boy,  |
|nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are    |
|here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man|
|all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man,   |
|though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of   |
|love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than   |
|though I grasped an Emperor's!" "There go two daft ones now," muttered the old  |
|Manxman. "One daft with strength, the other daft with weakness. But here's the  |
|end of the rotten line--all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have|
|a new line altogether. I'll see Mr. Stubb about it." Steering now south-eastward|
|by Ahab's levelled steel, and her progress solely determined by Ahab's level    |
|log and line; the Pequod held on her path towards the Equator. Making so long   |
|a passage through such unfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long,   |
|sideways impelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all   |
|these seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and desperate scene.|
|At last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the Equatorial|
|fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before the dawn, was sailing |
|by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch--then headed by Flask--was startled     |
|by a cry so plaintively wild and unearthly--like half-articulated wailings of   |
|the ghosts of all Herod's murdered Innocents--that one and all, they started    |
|from their reveries, and for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned |
|all transfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild cry    |
|remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the crew said it    |
|was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers remained unappalled. Yet |
|the grey Manxman--the oldest mariner of all--declared that the wild thrilling   |
|sounds that were heard, were the voices of newly drowned men in the sea. Below  |
|in his hammock, Ahab did not hear of this till grey dawn, when he came to the   |
|deck; it was then recounted to him by Flask, not unaccompanied with hinted      |
|dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus explained the wonder. Those rocky  |
|islands the ship had passed were the resort of great numbers of seals, and some |
|young seals that had lost their dams, or some dams that had lost their cubs,    |
|must have risen nigh the ship and kept company with her, crying and sobbing     |
|with their human sort of wail. But this only the more affected some of them,    |
|because most mariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising |
|not only from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the human    |
|look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen peeringly uprising   |
|from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain circumstances, seals have   |
|more than once been mistaken for men. But the bodings of the crew were destined |
|to receive a most plausible confirmation in the fate of one of their number     |
|that morning. At sun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at    |
|the fore; and whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for |
|sailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus with the |
|man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he had not been long at   |
|his perch, when a cry was heard--a cry and a rushing--and looking up, they saw  |
|a falling phantom in the air; and looking down, a little tossed heap of white   |
|bubbles in the blue of the sea. The life-buoy--a long slender cask--was dropped |
|from the stern, where it always hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand  |
|rose to seize it, and the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken,  |
|so that it slowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore;  |
|and the studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to     |
|yield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one. And thus the first man    |
|of the Pequod that mounted the mast to look out for the White Whale, on the     |
|White Whale's own peculiar ground; that man was swallowed up in the deep. But   |
|few, perhaps, thought of that at the time. Indeed, in some sort, they were not  |
|grieved at this event, at least as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a    |
|foreshadowing of evil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already   |
|presaged. They declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks     |
|they had heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay. The lost   |
|life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see to it; but as no |
|cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in the feverish eagerness of|
|what seemed the approaching crisis of the voyage, all hands were impatient of   |
|any toil but what was directly connected with its final end, whatever that might|
|prove to be; therefore, they were going to leave the ship's stern unprovided    |
|with a buoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Queequeg hinted a hint |
|concerning his coffin. "A life-buoy of a coffin!" cried Starbuck, starting.     |
|"Rather queer, that, I should say," said Stubb. "It will make a good enough     |
|one," said Flask, "the carpenter here can arrange it easily." "Bring it up;     |
|there's nothing else for it," said Starbuck, after a melancholy pause. "Rig it, |
|carpenter; do not look at me so--the coffin, I mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it."|
|"And shall I nail down the lid, sir?" moving his hand as with a hammer. "Aye."  |
|"And shall I caulk the seams, sir?" moving his hand as with a caulking-iron.    |
|"Aye." "And shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?" moving his hand as |
|with a pitch-pot. "Away! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the   |
|coffin, and no more.--Mr. Stubb, Mr. Flask, come forward with me." "He goes off |
|in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he baulks. Now I don't like    |
|this. I make a leg for Captain Ahab, and he wears it like a gentleman; but I    |
|make a bandbox for Queequeg, and he won't put his head into it. Are all my pains|
|to go for nothing with that coffin? And now I'm ordered to make a life-buoy     |
|of it. It's like turning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other     |
|side now. I don't like this cobbling sort of business--I don't like it at all;  |
|it's undignified; it's not my place. Let tinkers' brats do tinkerings; we are   |
|their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin, fair-and-square   |
|mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at the beginning, and is at  |
|the middle when midway, and comes to an end at the conclusion; not a cobbler's  |
|job, that's at an end in the middle, and at the beginning at the end. It's the  |
|old woman's tricks to be giving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all      |
|old women have for tinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who ran away      |
|with a bald-headed young tinker once. And that's the reason I never would work  |
|for lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the Vineyard;     |
|they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run off with me. But    |
|heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid;|
|caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang |
|it with the snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before|
|with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the  |
|rigging, ere they would do the job. But I'm made of knotty Aroostook hemlock;   |
|I don't budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing about with a grave-yard tray!   |
|But never mind. We workers in woods make bridal-bedsteads and card-tables, as   |
|well as coffins and hearses. We work by the month, or by the job, or by the     |
|profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore of our work, unless it be too   |
|confounded cobbling, and then we stash it if we can. Hem! I'll do the job, now, |
|tenderly. I'll have me--let's see--how many in the ship's company, all told? But|
|I've forgotten. Any way, I'll have me thirty separate, Turk's-headed life-lines,|
|each three feet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go      |
|down, there'll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight    |
|not seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and |
|marling-spike! Let's to it." Back, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He   |
|goes! Not this hand complies with my humor more genially than that boy.--Middle |
|aisle of a church! What's here?" "Life-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck's orders. Oh,    |
|look, sir! Beware the hatchway!" "Thank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the   |
|vault." "Sir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does." "Art not thou the |
|leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy shop?" "I believe it did,     |
|sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?" "Well enough. But art thou not also the      |
|undertaker?" "Aye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Queequeg;  |
|but they've set me now to turning it into something else." "Then tell me; art   |
|thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling, monopolising, heathenish old   |
|scamp, to be one day making legs, and the next day coffins to clap them in, and |
|yet again life-buoys out of those same coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the |
|gods, and as much of a jack-of-all-trades." "But I do not mean anything, sir.   |
|I do as I do." "The gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about  |
|a coffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the craters   |
|for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in hand. Dost thou |
|never?" "Sing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I'm indifferent enough, sir, for that; but   |
|the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none|
|in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark to it." "Aye,    |
|and that's because the lid there's a sounding-board; and what in all things     |
|makes the sounding-board is this--there's naught beneath. And yet, a coffin     |
|with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter. Hast thou ever helped  |
|carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against the churchyard gate, going in? |
|"Faith, sir, I've--" "Faith? What's that?" "Why, faith, sir, it's only a sort of|
|exclamation-like--that's all, sir." "Um, um; go on." "I was about to say, sir,  |
|that--" "Art thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?    |
|Look at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight." "He goes aft.   |
|That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot latitudes. I've heard that |
|the Isle of Albemarle, one of the Gallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in    |
|the middle. Seems to me some sort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in    |
|his middle. He's always under the Line--fiery hot, I tell ye! He's looking this |
|way--come, oakum; quick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and  |
|I'm the professor of musical glasses--tap, tap!" (AHAB TO HIMSELF.) "There's    |
|a sight! There's a sound! The grey-headed woodpecker tapping the hollow tree!   |
|Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two line-tubs,|
|full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds |
|tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but     |
|imponderable thoughts? Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a   |
|mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life.|
|A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual   |
|sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! I'll think of     |
|that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side,  |
|the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain twilight to me. Will ye never have|
|done, Carpenter, with that accursed sound? I go below; let me not see that thing|
|here when I return again. Now, then, Pip, we'll talk this over; I do suck most  |
|wondrous philosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds  |
|must empty into thee!" Next day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing|
|directly down upon the Pequod, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the|
|time the Pequod was making good speed through the water; but as the broad-winged|
|windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all fell together as     |
|blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from the smitten hull. "Bad    |
|news; she brings bad news," muttered the old Manxman. But ere her commander,    |
|who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he could hopefully hail,  |
|Ahab's voice was heard. "Hast seen the White Whale?" "Aye, yesterday. Have ye   |
|seen a whale-boat adrift?" Throttling his joy, Ahab negatively answered this    |
|unexpected question; and would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the    |
|stranger captain himself, having stopped his vessel's way, was seen descending  |
|her side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the Pequod's        |
|main-chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was recognised by Ahab   |
|for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation was exchanged. "Where was   |
|he?--not killed!--not killed!" cried Ahab, closely advancing. "How was it?" It  |
|seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous, while three     |
|of the stranger's boats were engaged with a shoal of whales, which had led      |
|them some four or five miles from the ship; and while they were yet in swift    |
|chase to windward, the white hump and head of Moby Dick had suddenly loomed     |
|up out of the water, not very far to leeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged      |
|boat--a reserved one--had been instantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail    |
|before the wind, this fourth boat--the swiftest keeled of all--seemed to have   |
|succeeded in fastening--at least, as well as the man at the mast-head could     |
|tell anything about it. In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat; and  |
|then a swift gleam of bubbling white water; and after that nothing more; whence |
|it was concluded that the stricken whale must have indefinitely run away with   |
|his pursuers, as often happens. There was some apprehension, but no positive    |
|alarm, as yet. The recall signals were placed in the rigging; darkness came on; |
|and forced to pick up her three far to windward boats--ere going in quest of    |
|the fourth one in the precisely opposite direction--the ship had not only been  |
|necessitated to leave that boat to its fate till near midnight, but, for the    |
|time, to increase her distance from it. But the rest of her crew being at last  |
|safe aboard, she crowded all sail--stunsail on stunsail--after the missing boat;|
|kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every other man aloft on the  |
|look-out. But though when she had thus sailed a sufficient distance to gain     |
|the presumed place of the absent ones when last seen; though she then paused    |
|to lower her spare boats to pull all around her; and not finding anything, had  |
|again dashed on; again paused, and lowered her boats; and though she had thus   |
|continued doing till daylight; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel    |
|had been seen. The story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to      |
|reveal his object in boarding the Pequod. He desired that ship to unite with    |
|his own in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles apart,   |
|on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were. "I will wager  |
|something now," whispered Stubb to Flask, "that some one in that missing boat   |
|wore off that Captain's best coat; mayhap, his watch--he's so cursed anxious to |
|get it back. Who ever heard of two pious whale-ships cruising after one missing |
|whale-boat in the height of the whaling season? See, Flask, only see how pale   |
|he looks--pale in the very buttons of his eyes--look--it wasn't the coat--it    |
|must have been the--" "My boy, my own boy is among them. For God's sake--I beg, |
|I conjure"--here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Ahab, who thus far had but   |
|icily received his petition. "For eight-and-forty hours let me charter your     |
|ship--I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it--if there be no other    |
|way--for eight-and-forty hours only--only that--you must, oh, you must, and     |
|you SHALL do this thing." "His son!" cried Stubb, "oh, it's his son he's lost!  |
|I take back the coat and watch--what says Ahab? We must save that boy." "He's   |
|drowned with the rest on 'em, last night," said the old Manx sailor standing    |
|behind them; "I heard; all of ye heard their spirits." Now, as it shortly       |
|turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel's the more melancholy, was    |
|the circumstance, that not only was one of the Captain's sons among the number  |
|of the missing boat's crew; but among the number of the other boat's crews, at  |
|the same time, but on the other hand, separated from the ship during the dark   |
|vicissitudes of the chase, there had been still another son; as that for a time,|
|the wretched father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity;      |
|which was only solved for him by his chief mate's instinctively adopting the    |
|ordinary procedure of a whale-ship in such emergencies, that is, when placed    |
|between jeopardized but divided boats, always to pick up the majority first.    |
|But the captain, for some unknown constitutional reason, had refrained from     |
|mentioning all this, and not till forced to it by Ahab's iciness did he allude  |
|to his one yet missing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father    |
|with the earnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer's paternal love,    |
|had thus early sought to initiate him in the perils and wonders of a vocation   |
|almost immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor does it unfrequently occur,|
|that Nantucket captains will send a son of such tender age away from them, for  |
|a protracted three or four years' voyage in some other ship than their own;     |
|so that their first knowledge of a whaleman's career shall be unenervated by    |
|any chance display of a father's natural but untimely partiality, or undue      |
|apprehensiveness and concern. Meantime, now the stranger was still beseeching   |
|his poor boon of Ahab; and Ahab still stood like an anvil, receiving every      |
|shock, but without the least quivering of his own. "I will not go," said the    |
|stranger, "till you say aye to me. Do to me as you would have me do to you in   |
|the like case. For YOU too have a boy, Captain Ahab--though but a child, and    |
|nestling safely at home now--a child of your old age too--Yes, yes, you relent; |
|I see it--run, run, men, now, and stand by to square in the yards." "Avast,"    |
|cried Ahab--"touch not a rope-yarn"; then in a voice that prolongingly moulded  |
|every word--"Captain Gardiner, I will not do it. Even now I lose time. Good-bye,|
|good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I forgive myself, but I must go. Mr.       |
|Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present    |
|instant warn off all strangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail |
|as before." Hurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,  |
|leaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter rejection|
|of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment, Gardiner silently    |
|hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his boat, and returned to his  |
|ship. Soon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel   |
|was in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot, however |
|small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung round; starboard and  |
|larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat against a head sea; and again it  |
|pushed her before it; while all the while, her masts and yards were thickly     |
|clustered with men, as three tall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying     |
|among the boughs. But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you  |
|plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without      |
|comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not. Lad,  |
|lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now. The hour is coming when Ahab    |
|would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee by him. There is that in |
|thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my malady. Like cures like; and for  |
|this hunt, my malady becomes my most desired health. Do thou abide below here,  |
|where they shall serve thee, as if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt  |
|sit here in my own screwed chair; another screw to it, thou must be." "No, no,  |
|no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for your one lost leg; |
|only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain a part of ye." "Oh! spite of|
|million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless fidelity of man!--and   |
|a black! and crazy!--but methinks like-cures-like applies to him too; he grows  |
|so sane again." "They tell me, sir, that Stubb did once desert poor little Pip, |
|whose drowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin.   |
|But I will never desert ye, sir, as Stubb did him. Sir, I must go with ye." "If |
|thou speakest thus to me much more, Ahab's purpose keels up in him. I tell thee |
|no; it cannot be." "Oh good master, master, master! "Weep so, and I will murder |
|thee! have a care, for Ahab too is mad. Listen, and thou wilt often hear my     |
|ivory foot upon the deck, and still know that I am there. And now I quit thee.  |
|Thy hand!--Met! True art thou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So:     |
|God for ever bless thee; and if it come to that,--God for ever save thee, let   |
|what will befall." "Here he this instant stood; I stand in his air,--but I'm    |
|alone. Now were even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he's missing. Pip!    |
|Pip! Ding, dong, ding! Who's seen Pip? He must be up here; let's try the door.  |
|What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there's no opening it. It must   |
|be the spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and told me this screwed chair was  |
|mine. Here, then, I'll seat me, against the transom, in the ship's full middle, |
|all her keel and her three masts before me. Here, our old sailors say, in their |
|black seventy-fours great admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows|
|of captains and lieutenants. Ha! what's this? epaulets! epaulets! the epaulets  |
|all come crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye; fill up, monsieurs!|
|What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy's host to white men with gold lace   |
|upon their coats!--Monsieurs, have ye seen one Pip?--a little negro lad, five   |
|feet high, hang-dog look, and cowardly! Jumped from a whale-boat once;--seen    |
|him? No! Well then, fill up again, captains, and let's drink shame upon all     |
|cowards! I name no names. Shame upon them! Put one foot upon the table. Shame   |
|upon all cowards.--Hist! above there, I hear ivory--Oh, master! master! I am    |
|indeed down-hearted when you walk over me. But here I'll stay, though this stern|
|strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to join me." And now    |
|that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a preliminary cruise, |
|Ahab,--all other whaling waters swept--seemed to have chased his foe into an    |
|ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there; now, that he found himself     |
|hard by the very latitude and longitude where his tormenting wound had been     |
|inflicted; now that a vessel had been spoken which on the very day preceding had|
|actually encountered Moby Dick;--and now that all his successive meetings with  |
|various ships contrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with    |
|which the white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against; now  |
|it was that there lurked a something in the old man's eyes, which it was hardly |
|sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting polar star, which through  |
|the livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central  |
|gaze; so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of  |
|the gloomy crew. It domineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts,   |
|misgivings, fears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth  |
|a single spear or leaf. In this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced   |
|or natural, vanished. Stubb no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more   |
|strove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed ground to     |
|finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped mortar of Ahab's iron   |
|soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the deck, ever conscious that the  |
|old man's despot eye was on them. But did you deeply scan him in his more secret|
|confidential hours; when he thought no glance but one was on him; then you would|
|have seen that even as Ahab's eyes so awed the crew's, the inscrutable Parsee's |
|glance awed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected      |
|it. Such an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah now;   |
|such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious at him; half  |
|uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal substance, or else a   |
|tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen being's body. And that shadow|
|was always hovering there. For not by night, even, had Fedallah ever certainly  |
|been known to slumber, or go below. He would stand still for hours: but never   |
|sat or leaned; his wan but wondrous eyes did plainly say--We two watchmen never |
|rest. Nor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the    |
|deck, unless Ahab was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole, or exactly|
|pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,--the main-mast and the mizen; |
|or else they saw him standing in the cabin-scuttle,--his living foot advanced   |
|upon the deck, as if to step; his hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that   |
|however motionless he stood, however the days and nights were added on, that    |
|he had not swung in his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they    |
|could never tell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed  |
|at times; or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter, though     |
|he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and the unheeded    |
|night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved coat and hat. The    |
|clothes that the night had wet, the next day's sunshine dried upon him; and     |
|so, day after day, and night after night; he went no more beneath the planks;   |
|whatever he wanted from the cabin that thing he sent for. He ate in the same    |
|open air; that is, his two only meals,--breakfast and dinner: supper he never   |
|touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly grew all gnarled, as unearthed roots|
|of trees blown over, which still grow idly on at naked base, though perished in |
|the upper verdure. But though his whole life was now become one watch on deck;  |
|and though the Parsee's mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet   |
|these two never seemed to speak--one man to the other--unless at long intervals |
|some passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent spell   |
|seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck crew, they     |
|seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak one word; by night,   |
|dumb men were both, so far as concerned the slightest verbal interchange. At    |
|times, for longest hours, without a single hail, they stood far parted in the   |
|starlight; Ahab in his scuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly   |
|gazing upon each other; as if in the Parsee Ahab saw his forethrown shadow, in  |
|Ahab the Parsee his abandoned substance. And yet, somehow, did Ahab--in his     |
|own proper self, as daily, hourly, and every instant, commandingly revealed to  |
|his subordinates,--Ahab seemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave.   |
|Still again both seemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the  |
|lean shade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and    |
|keel was solid Ahab. At the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron     |
|voice was heard from aft,--"Man the mast-heads!"--and all through the day, till |
|after sunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking of  |
|the helmsman's bell, was heard--"What d'ye see?--sharp! sharp!" But when three  |
|or four days had slided by, after meeting the children-seeking Rachel; and no   |
|spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac old man seemed distrustful of his crew's|
|fidelity; at least, of nearly all except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to    |
|doubt, even, whether Stubb and Flask might not willingly overlook the sight he  |
|sought. But if these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from  |
|verbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them. "I will  |
|have the first sight of the whale myself,"--he said. "Aye! Ahab must have the   |
|doubloon! and with his own hands he rigged a nest of basketed bowlines; and     |
|sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved block, to secure to the main-mast   |
|head, he received the two ends of the downward-reeved rope; and attaching one to|
|his basket prepared a pin for the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. |
|This done, with that end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked |
|round upon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long    |
|upon Daggoo, Queequeg, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then settling his   |
|firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,--"Take the rope, sir--I give it into|
|thy hands, Starbuck." Then arranging his person in the basket, he gave the word |
|for them to hoist him to his perch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope |
|at last; and afterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand clinging round   |
|the royal mast, Ahab gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles,--ahead,     |
|astern, this side, and that,--within the wide expanded circle commanded at so   |
|great a height. When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated    |
|place in the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea    |
|is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these        |
|circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge to some|
|one man who has the special watch of it. Because in such a wilderness of running|
|rigging, whose various different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly    |
|discerned by what is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these  |
|ropes are being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be    |
|but a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted    |
|sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all      |
|swooping to the sea. So Ahab's proceedings in this matter were not unusual; the |
|only strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck, almost the one only  |
|man who had ever ventured to oppose him with anything in the slightest degree   |
|approaching to decision--one of those too, whose faithfulness on the look-out   |
|he had seemed to doubt somewhat;--it was strange, that this was the very man    |
|he should select for his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an    |
|otherwise distrusted person's hands. Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft;|
|ere he had been there ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks     |
|which so often fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen |
|in these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his    |
|head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a thousand feet   |
|straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and went eddying again     |
|round his head. But with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Ahab  |
|seemed not to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked  |
|it much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least heedful   |
|eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every sight. "Your     |
|hat, your hat, sir!" suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who being posted at    |
|the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Ahab, though somewhat lower than his |
|level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing them. But already the sable wing    |
|was before the old man's eyes; the long hooked bill at his head: with a scream, |
|the black hawk darted away with his prize. An eagle flew thrice round Tarquin's |
|head, removing his cap to replace it, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared|
|that Tarquin would be king of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was    |
|that omen accounted good. Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew     |
|on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while   |
|from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned,  |
|falling from that vast height into the sea. The intense Pequod sailed on; the   |
|rolling waves and days went by; the life-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and   |
|another ship, most miserably misnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew    |
|nigh, all eyes were fixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some   |
|whaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine feet;      |
|serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats. Upon the stranger's    |
|shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and some few splintered planks, of|
|what had once been a whale-boat; but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly |
|as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.|
|"Hast seen the White Whale?" "Look!" replied the hollow-cheeked captain from    |
|his taffrail; and with his trumpet he pointed to the wreck. "Hast killed him?"  |
|"The harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that," answered the other,     |
|sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose gathered sides some    |
|noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together. "Not forged!" and snatching     |
|Perth's levelled iron from the crotch, Ahab held it out, exclaiming--"Look ye,  |
|Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered|
|by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot     |
|place behind the fin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"      |
|"Then God keep thee, old man--see'st thou that"--pointing to the hammock--"I    |
|bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only yesterday; but were dead    |
|ere night. Only THAT one I bury; the rest were buried before they died; you     |
|sail upon their tomb." Then turning to his crew--"Are ye ready there? place     |
|the plank then on the rail, and lift the body; so, then--Oh! God"--advancing    |
|towards the hammock with uplifted hands--"may the resurrection and the life--"  |
|"Brace forward! Up helm!" cried Ahab like lightning to his men. But the suddenly|
|started Pequod was not quick enough to escape the sound of the splash that the  |
|corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not so quick, indeed, but that some of   |
|the flying bubbles might have sprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.    |
|As Ahab now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy hanging     |
|at the Pequod's stern came into conspicuous relief. "Ha! yonder! look yonder,   |
|men!" cried a foreboding voice in her wake. "In vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly  |
|our sad burial; ye but turn us your taffrail to show us your coffin!" It was    |
|a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable     |
|in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and   |
|soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long,    |
|strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither,  |
|on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the |
|gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in   |
|the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these|
|were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though |
|thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without;   |
|those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them. |
|Aloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle air to this|
|bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the girdling line of the   |
|horizon, a soft and tremulous motion--most seen here at the Equator--denoted the|
|fond, throbbing trust, the loving alarms, with which the poor bride gave her    |
|bosom away. Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly   |
|firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes  |
|of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his |
|splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven. Oh, immortal |
|infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all |
|round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how oblivious were ye of old Ahab's   |
|close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed    |
|elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of     |
|singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.     |
|Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side and watched|
|how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more    |
|that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted|
|air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul.  |
|That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the  |
|step-mother world, so long cruel--forbidding--now threw affectionate arms round |
|his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that  |
|however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to    |
|bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did  |
|all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop. Starbuck saw the old  |
|man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side; and he seemed to hear in     |
|his own true heart the measureless sobbing that stole out of the centre of the  |
|serenity around. Careful not to touch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew    |
|near to him, and stood there. Ahab turned. "Starbuck!" "Sir." "Oh, Starbuck!    |
|it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day--very much such  |
|a sweetness as this--I struck my first whale--a boy-harpooneer of eighteen!     |
|Forty--forty--forty years ago!--ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty    |
|years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless      |
|sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to    |
|make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty  |
|years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the  |
|desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's     |
|exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green   |
|country without--oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary     |
|command!--when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known    |
|to me before--and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare--fit      |
|emblem of the dry nourishment of my soil!--when the poorest landsman has had    |
|fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy  |
|crusts--away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, |
|and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage      |
|pillow--wife? wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that |
|poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the  |
|boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old    |
|Ahab has furiously, foamingly chased his prey--more a demon than a man!--aye,   |
|aye! what a forty years' fool--fool--old fool, has old Ahab been! Why this      |
|strife of the chase? why weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron,     |
|and the lance? how the richer or better is Ahab now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is   |
|it not hard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been    |
|snatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me, that I   |
|seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some ashes! But do I    |
|look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel deadly faint, bowed, and     |
|humped, as though I were Adam, staggering beneath the piled centuries since     |
|Paradise. God! God! God!--crack my heart!--stave my brain!--mockery! mockery!   |
|bitter, biting mockery of grey hairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and   |
|seem and feel thus intolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let     |
|me look into a human eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better     |
|than to gaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is   |
|the magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no; stay on  |
|board, on board!--lower not when I do; when branded Ahab gives chase to Moby    |
|Dick. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with the far away home I see  |
|in that eye!" "Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after   |
|all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly |
|these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's--wife     |
|and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir,    |
|are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us   |
|away!--this instant let me alter the course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my|
|Captain, would we bowl on our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they|
|have some such mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket." "They have, they    |
|have. I have seen them--some summer days in the morning. About this time--yes,  |
|it is his noon nap now--the boy vivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his      |
|mother tells him of me, of cannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but  |
|will yet come back to dance him again." "'Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She     |
|promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the |
|first glimpse of his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for  |
|Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see!   |
|the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!" But Ahab's glance  |
|was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered   |
|apple to the soil. "What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing     |
|is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor    |
|commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing,  |
|and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready    |
|to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is     |
|Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun     |
|move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can |
|revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat;   |
|this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that    |
|thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and  |
|round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all   |
|the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! |
|who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go,  |
|man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar? But it is a   |
|mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and the air smells now, as if it blew  |
|from a far-away meadow; they have been making hay somewhere under the slopes    |
|of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay.     |
|Sleeping? Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep?    |
|Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in    |
|the half-cut swaths--Starbuck!" But blanched to a corpse's hue with despair,    |
|the Mate had stolen away. Ahab crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; |
|but started at two reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was       |
|motionlessly leaning over the same rail. That night, in the mid-watch, when the |
|old man--as his wont at intervals--stepped forth from the scuttle in which he   |
|leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely,   |
|snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to      |
|some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar  |
|odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was  |
|palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting |
|the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing   |
|of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ordered the ship's course to    |
|be slightly altered, and the sail to be shortened. The acute policy dictating   |
|these movements was sufficiently vindicated at daybreak, by the sight of a long |
|sleek on the sea directly and lengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in|
|the pleated watery wrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of   |
|some swift tide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream. "Man the mast-heads! |
|Call all hands!" Thundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the   |
|forecastle deck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they  |
|seemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear with their|
|clothes in their hands. "What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the |
|sky. "Nothing, nothing sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply. "T'gallant    |
|sails!--stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!" All sail being set, he   |
|now cast loose the life-line, reserved for swaying him to the main royal-mast   |
|head; and in a few moments they were hoisting him thither, when, while but two  |
|thirds of the way aloft, and while peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy |
|between the main-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in    |
|the air. "There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is     |
|Moby Dick!" Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three  |
|look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale     |
|they had so long been pursuing. Ahab had now gained his final perch, some feet  |
|above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just beneath him on the cap of the |
|top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian's head was almost on a level with Ahab's   |
|heel. From this height the whale was now seen some mile or so ahead, at every   |
|roll of the sea revealing his high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his    |
|silent spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent  |
|spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.    |
|"And did none of ye see it before?" cried Ahab, hailing the perched men all     |
|around him. "I saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Ahab did,    |
|and I cried out," said Tashtego. "Not the same instant; not the same--no, the   |
|doubloon is mine, Fate reserved the doubloon for me. I only; none of ye could   |
|have raised the White Whale first. There she blows!--there she blows!--there she|
|blows! There again!--there again!" he cried, in long-drawn, lingering, methodic |
|tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale's visible jets. "He's    |
|going to sound! In stunsails! Down top-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. |
|Starbuck, remember, stay on board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff    |
|a point! So; steady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water!    |
|All ready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck; lower,   |
|lower,--quick, quicker!" and he slid through the air to the deck. "He is heading|
|straight to leeward, sir," cried Stubb, "right away from us; cannot have seen   |
|the ship yet." "Be dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!--brace   |
|up! Shiver her!--shiver her!--So; well that! Boats, boats!" Soon all the boats  |
|but Starbuck's were dropped; all the boat-sails set--all the paddles plying;    |
|with rippling swiftness, shooting to leeward; and Ahab heading the onset. A     |
|pale, death-glimmer lit up Fedallah's sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his  |
|mouth. Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea;  |
|but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still   |
|more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so   |
|serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly  |
|unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding|
|along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring  |
|of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the     |
|slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged  |
|waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a      |
|musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters  |
|interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on   |
|either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken  |
|again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea,      |
|alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from     |
|the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance    |
|projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals one of the cloud of     |
|soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish,  |
|silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like |
|pennons. A gentle joyousness--a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested|
|the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa|
|clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon   |
|the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial   |
|bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the       |
|glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam. On each soft side--coincident with|
|the parted swell, that but once leaving him, then flowed so wide away--on each  |
|bright side, the whale shed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among  |
|the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had    |
|ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of   |
|tornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all who for  |
|the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way thou may'st have   |
|bejuggled and destroyed before. And thus, through the serene tranquillities of  |
|the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding  |
|rapture, Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors      |
|of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.    |
|But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an instant his    |
|whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and   |
|warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself,|
|sounded, and went out of sight. Hoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing,    |
|the white sea-fowls longingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.     |
|With oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift, the three  |
|boats now stilly floated, awaiting Moby Dick's reappearance. "An hour," said    |
|Ahab, standing rooted in his boat's stern; and he gazed beyond the whale's      |
|place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing vacancies to leeward. It was |
|only an instant; for again his eyes seemed whirling round in his head as he     |
|swept the watery circle. The breeze now freshened; the sea began to swell. "The |
|birds!--the birds!" cried Tashtego. In long Indian file, as when herons take    |
|wing, the white birds were now all flying towards Ahab's boat; and when within  |
|a few yards began fluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round,    |
|with joyous, expectant cries. Their vision was keener than man's; Ahab could    |
|discover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down into its   |
|depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel,    |
|with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned,    |
|and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening |
|teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth|
|and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue     |
|of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored    |
|marble tomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled  |
|the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to |
|change places with him, went forward to the bows, and seizing Perth's harpoon,  |
|commanded his crew to grasp their oars and stand by to stern. Now, by reason of |
|this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis, its bow, by anticipation,    |
|was made to face the whale's head while yet under water. But as if perceiving   |
|this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him,    |
|sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated|
|head lengthwise beneath the boat. Through and through; through every plank and  |
|each rib, it thrilled for an instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in |
|the manner of a biting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within  |
|his mouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into the |
|open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish pearl-white of  |
|the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab's head, and reached higher  |
|than that. In this attitude the White Whale now shook the slight cedar as a     |
|mildly cruel cat her mouse. With unastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed  |
|his arms; but the tiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other's heads to    |
|gain the uttermost stern. And now, while both elastic gunwales were springing   |
|in and out, as the whale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way;    |
|and from his body being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at   |
|from the bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while    |
|the other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis impossible to    |
|withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with this tantalizing      |
|vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and helpless in the very jaws he|
|hated; frenzied with all this, he seized the long bone with his naked hands, and|
|wildly strove to wrench it from its gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw|
|slipped from him; the frail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both   |
|jaws, like an enormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely    |
|in twain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the two   |
|floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the crew at the |
|stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold fast to the oars to  |
|lash them across. At that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, |
|the first to perceive the whale's intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a|
|movement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had made one|
|final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only slipping further into   |
|the whale's mouth, and tilting over sideways as it slipped, the boat had shaken |
|off his hold on the jaw; spilled him out of it, as he leaned to the push; and so|
|he fell flat-faced upon the sea. Ripplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick|
|now lay at a little distance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and |
|down in the billows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled   |
|body; so that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose--some twenty or more feet out|
|of the water--the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves, dazzlingly |
|broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray still higher into   |
|the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel billows only recoil from  |
|the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to overleap its summit with their       |
|scud. This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its designation   |
|(pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary up-and-down poise of   |
|the whale-lance, in the exercise called pitchpoling, previously described. By   |
|this motion the whale must best and most comprehensively view whatever objects  |
|may be encircling him. But soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Moby Dick     |
|swam swiftly round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in   |
|his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly    |
|assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood    |
|of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of       |
|Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent    |
|tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,--though he could still keep afloat,    |
|even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen,   |
|like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From the boat's  |
|fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging       |
|crew, at the other drifting end, could not succor him; more than enough was     |
|it for them to look to themselves. For so revolvingly appalling was the White   |
|Whale's aspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made,  |
|that he seemed horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other boats,     |
|unharmed, still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into the eddy to     |
|strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant destruction of the       |
|jeopardized castaways, Ahab and all; nor in that case could they themselves     |
|hope to escape. With straining eyes, then, they remained on the outer edge of   |
|the direful zone, whose centre had now become the old man's head. Meantime,     |
|from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship's mast heads; and   |
|squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene; and was now so nigh,     |
|that Ahab in the water hailed her!--"Sail on the"--but that moment a breaking   |
|sea dashed on him from Moby Dick, and whelmed him for the time. But struggling  |
|out of it again, and chancing to rise on a towering crest, he shouted,--"Sail   |
|on the whale!--Drive him off!" The Pequod's prows were pointed; and breaking    |
|up the charmed circle, she effectually parted the white whale from his victim.  |
|As he sullenly swam off, the boats flew to the rescue. Dragged into Stubb's     |
|boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the |
|long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to  |
|his body's doom: for a time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat,   |
|like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails   |
|came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines. But this intensity of his   |
|physical prostration did but so much the more abbreviate it. In an instant's    |
|compass, great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum total of     |
|those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so,  |
|such hearts, though summary in each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it,|
|in their life-time aggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous|
|intensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures contain   |
|the entire circumferences of inferior souls. "The harpoon," said Ahab, half way |
|rising, and draggingly leaning on one bended arm--"is it safe?" "Aye, sir, for  |
|it was not darted; this is it," said Stubb, showing it. "Lay it before me;--any |
|missing men?" "One, two, three, four, five;--there were five oars, sir, and     |
|here are five men." "That's good.--Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I     |
|see him! there! there! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!--Hands     |
|off from me! The eternal sap runs up in Ahab's bones again! Set the sail; out   |
|oars; the helm!" It is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew,      |
|being picked up by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase   |
|is thus continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now. But  |
|the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the whale, for     |
|he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with a velocity which   |
|plainly showed, that if now, under these circumstances, pushed on, the chase    |
|would prove an indefinitely prolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any     |
|crew endure for so long a period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at   |
|the oar; a thing barely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship  |
|itself, then, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate  |
|means of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her, and     |
|were soon swayed up to their cranes--the two parts of the wrecked boat having   |
|been previously secured by her--and then hoisting everything to her side, and   |
|stacking her canvas high up, and sideways outstretching it with stun-sails, like|
|the double-jointed wings of an albatross; the Pequod bore down in the leeward   |
|wake of Moby-Dick. At the well known, methodic intervals, the whale's glittering|
|spout was regularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would     |
|be reported as just gone down, Ahab would take the time, and then pacing the    |
|deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the allotted hour   |
|expired, his voice was heard.--"Whose is the doubloon now? D'ye see him?" and if|
|the reply was, No, sir! straightway he commanded them to lift him to his perch. |
|In this way the day wore on; Ahab, now aloft and motionless; anon, unrestingly  |
|pacing the planks. As he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail    |
|the men aloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to    |
|a still greater breadth--thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat, at   |
|every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped upon the      |
|quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered stern. At last he |
|paused before it; and as in an already over-clouded sky fresh troops of clouds  |
|will sometimes sail across, so over the old man's face there now stole some such|
|added gloom as this. Stubb saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly,    |
|though, to evince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place  |
|in his Captain's mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed--"The thistle|
|the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!" "What soulless  |
|thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did I not know thee brave as|
|fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could swear thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor |
|laugh should be heard before a wreck." "Aye, sir," said Starbuck drawing near,  |
|"'tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an ill one." "Omen? omen?--the dictionary! If|
|the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honourably speak outright;   |
|not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint.--Begone! Ye two    |
|are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb      |
|is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the        |
|millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold--I    |
|shiver!--How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though   |
|he spout ten times a second!" The day was nearly done; only the hem of his      |
|golden robe was rustling. Soon, it was almost dark, but the look-out men still  |
|remained unset. "Can't see the spout now, sir;--too dark"--cried a voice from   |
|the air. "How heading when last seen?" "As before, sir,--straight to leeward."  |
|"Good! he will travel slower now 'tis night. Down royals and top-gallant        |
|stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before morning; he's making  |
|a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm there! keep her full before the   |
|wind!--Aloft! come down!--Mr. Stubb, send a fresh hand to the fore-mast head,   |
|and see it manned till morning."--Then advancing towards the doubloon in the    |
|main-mast--"Men, this gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide   |
|here till the White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him,  |
|upon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man's; and if on that day I  |
|shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be divided among all of ye!|
|Away now!--the deck is thine, sir!" And so saying, he placed himself half way   |
|within the scuttle, and slouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when   |
|at intervals rousing himself to see how the night wore on. At day-break, the    |
|three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh. "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab after|
|allowing a little space for the light to spread. "See nothing, sir." "Turn up   |
|all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought for;--the top-gallant |
|sails!--aye, they should have been kept on her all night. But no matter--'tis   |
|but resting for the rush." Here be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of   |
|one particular whale, continued through day into night, and through night into  |
|day, is a thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such    |
|is the wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible confidence     |
|acquired by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket commanders; that    |
|from the simple observation of a whale when last descried, they will, under     |
|certain given circumstances, pretty accurately foretell both the direction in   |
|which he will continue to swim for a time, while out of sight, as well as his   |
|probable rate of progression during that period. And, in these cases, somewhat  |
|as a pilot, when about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending he well  |
|knows, and which he desires shortly to return to again, but at some further     |
|point; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takes the precise bearing  |
|of the cape at present visible, in order the more certainly to hit aright the   |
|remote, unseen headland, eventually to be visited: so does the fisherman, at his|
|compass, with the whale; for after being chased, and diligently marked, through |
|several hours of daylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature's   |
|future wake through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious      |
|mind of the hunter, as the pilot's coast is to him. So that to this hunter's    |
|wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake,    |
|is to all desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land. And as  |
|the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway is so familiarly known in its   |
|every pace, that, with watches in their hands, men time his rate as doctors     |
|that of a baby's pulse; and lightly say of it, the up train or the down train   |
|will reach such or such a spot, at such or such an hour; even so, almost, there |
|are occasions when these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep,    |
|according to the observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so many    |
|hours hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have about reached|
|this or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to render this acuteness at   |
|all successful in the end, the wind and the sea must be the whaleman's allies;  |
|for of what present avail to the becalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that|
|assures him he is exactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port?     |
|Inferable from these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching   |
|the chase of whales. The ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when |
|a cannon-ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level field. "By|
|salt and hemp!" cried Stubb, "but this swift motion of the deck creeps up one's |
|legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two brave fellows!--Ha, ha!  |
|Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise, on the sea,--for by live-oaks!  |
|my spine's a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait that leaves no dust behind!" "There   |
|she blows--she blows!--she blows!--right ahead!" was now the mast-head cry.     |
|"Aye, aye!" cried Stubb, "I knew it--ye can't escape--blow on and split your    |
|spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your trump--blister     |
|your lungs!--Ahab will dam off your blood, as a miller shuts his watergate      |
|upon the stream!" And Stubb did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The  |
|frenzies of the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine |
|worked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might have felt   |
|before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the growing awe of    |
|Ahab, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed, as timid prairie hares  |
|that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand of Fate had snatched all their |
|souls; and by the stirring perils of the previous day; the rack of the past     |
|night's suspense; the fixed, unfearing, blind, reckless way in which their      |
|wild craft went plunging towards its flying mark; by all these things, their    |
|hearts were bowled along. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and  |
|rushed the vessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol  |
|of that unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race. They were one man,    |
|not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together  |
|of all contrasting things--oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and  |
|hemp--yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot    |
|on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all   |
|the individualities of the crew, this man's valor, that man's fear; guilt and   |
|guiltiness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to    |
|that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to. The rigging    |
|lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were outspreadingly tufted  |
|with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one hand, some reached forth        |
|the other with impatient wavings; others, shading their eyes from the vivid     |
|sunlight, sat far out on the rocking yards; all the spars in full bearing of    |
|mortals, ready and ripe for their fate. Ah! how they still strove through that  |
|infinite blueness to seek out the thing that might destroy them! "Why sing ye   |
|not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after the lapse of some      |
|minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard. "Sway me up, men; ye have  |
|been deceived; not Moby Dick casts one odd jet that way, and then disappears."  |
|It was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some other    |
|thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for hardly had      |
|Ahab reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its pin on deck, when    |
|he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the air vibrate as with the   |
|combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs   |
|was heard, as--much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less|
|than a mile ahead--Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and    |
|indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his    |
|head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous |
|phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest      |
|depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of     |
|air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance |
|of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes    |
|off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance.       |
|"There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his immeasurable   |
|bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven. So suddenly     |
|seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved against the still bluer margin  |
|of the sky, the spray that he raised, for the moment, intolerably glittered and |
|glared like a glacier; and stood there gradually fading and fading away from    |
|its first sparkling intensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in   |
|a vale. "Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour    |
|and thy harpoon are at hand!--Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore.    |
|The boats!--stand by!" Unmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds,    |
|the men, like shooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and   |
|halyards; while Ahab, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped from his    |
|perch. "Lower away," he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat--a spare one, |
|rigged the afternoon previous. "Mr. Starbuck, the ship is thine--keep away from |
|the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!" As if to strike a quick terror into |
|them, by this time being the first assailant himself, Moby Dick had turned, and |
|was now coming for the three crews. Ahab's boat was central; and cheering his   |
|men, he told them he would take the whale head-and-head,--that is, pull straight|
|up to his forehead,--a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain limit, such|
|a course excludes the coming onset from the whale's sidelong vision. But ere    |
|that close limit was gained, and while yet all three boats were plain as the    |
|ship's three masts to his eye; the White Whale churning himself into furious    |
|speed, almost in an instant as it were, rushing among the boats with open jaws, |
|and a lashing tail, offered appalling battle on every side; and heedless of     |
|the irons darted at him from every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating     |
|each separate plank of which those boats were made. But skilfully manoeuvred,   |
|incessantly wheeling like trained chargers in the field; the boats for a while  |
|eluded him; though, at times, but by a plank's breadth; while all the time,     |
|Ahab's unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds. But at last in  |
|his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed and recrossed, and in    |
|a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three lines now fast to him, that    |
|they foreshortened, and, of themselves, warped the devoted boats towards the    |
|planted irons in him; though now for a moment the whale drew aside a little,    |
|as if to rally for a more tremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Ahab     |
|first paid out more line: and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it   |
|again--hoping that way to disencumber it of some snarls--when lo!--a sight more |
|savage than the embattled teeth of sharks! Caught and twisted--corkscrewed in   |
|the mazes of the line, loose harpoons and lances, with all their bristling      |
|barbs and points, came flashing and dripping up to the chocks in the bows of    |
|Ahab's boat. Only one thing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically|
|reached within--through--and then, without--the rays of steel; dragged in the   |
|line beyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering the  |
|rope near the chocks--dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into the sea; and  |
|was all fast again. That instant, the White Whale made a sudden rush among the  |
|remaining tangles of the other lines; by so doing, irresistibly dragged the     |
|more involved boats of Stubb and Flask towards his flukes; dashed them together |
|like two rolling husks on a surf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the   |
|sea, disappeared in a boiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous     |
|cedar chips of the wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a   |
|swiftly stirred bowl of punch. While the two crews were yet circling in the     |
|waters, reaching out after the revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating    |
|furniture, while aslope little Flask bobbed up and down like an empty vial,     |
|twitching his legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Stubb      |
|was lustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old man's   |
|line--now parting--admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to rescue whom  |
|he could;--in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand concreted perils,--Ahab's|
|yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires,--as,     |
|arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his   |
|broad forehead against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the |
|air; till it fell again--gunwale downwards--and Ahab and his men struggled out  |
|from under it, like seals from a sea-side cave. The first uprising momentum     |
|of the whale--modifying its direction as he struck the surface--involuntarily   |
|launched him along it, to a little distance from the centre of the destruction  |
|he had made; and with his back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling    |
|with his flukes from side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank,      |
|the least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew    |
|back, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his     |
|work for that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the ocean,  |
|and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his leeward way at a   |
|traveller's methodic pace. As before, the attentive ship having descried the    |
|whole fight, again came bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked |
|up the floating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at, and |
|safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists, and ankles;   |
|livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances; inextricable intricacies of     |
|rope; shattered oars and planks; all these were there; but no fatal or even     |
|serious ill seemed to have befallen any one. As with Fedallah the day before,   |
|so Ahab was now found grimly clinging to his boat's broken half, which afforded |
|a comparatively easy float; nor did it so exhaust him as the previous day's     |
|mishap. But when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as |
|instead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of Starbuck,|
|who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory leg had been snapped|
|off, leaving but one short sharp splinter. "Aye, aye, Starbuck, 'tis sweet      |
|to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he will; and would old Ahab had leaned     |
|oftener than he has." "The ferrule has not stood, sir," said the carpenter, now |
|coming up; "I put good work into that leg." "But no bones broken, sir, I hope," |
|said Stubb with true concern. "Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb!--d'ye  |
|see it.--But even with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no   |
|living bone of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor white  |
|whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and  |
|inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape yonder     |
|roof?--Aloft there! which way?" "Dead to leeward, sir." "Up helm, then; pile on |
|the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of the spare boats and rig them--Mr.|
|Starbuck away, and muster the boat's crews." "Let me first help thee towards    |
|the bulwarks, sir." "Oh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed       |
|fate! that the unconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven      |
|mate!" "Sir?" "My body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane--there,     |
|that shivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet.    |
|By heaven it cannot be!--missing?--quick! call them all." The old man's hinted  |
|thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the Parsee was not there. "The    |
|Parsee!" cried Stubb--"he must have been caught in--" "The black vomit wrench   |
|thee!--run all of ye above, alow, cabin, forecastle--find him--not gone--not    |
|gone!" But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was    |
|nowhere to be found. "Aye, sir," said Stubb--"caught among the tangles of your  |
|line--I thought I saw him dragging under." "MY line! MY line? Gone?--gone? What |
|means that little word?--What death-knell rings in it, that old Ahab shakes as  |
|if he were the belfry. The harpoon, too!--toss over the litter there,--d'ye see |
|it?--the forged iron, men, the white whale's--no, no, no,--blistered fool! this |
|hand did dart it!--'tis in the fish!--Aloft there! Keep him nailed--Quick!--all |
|hands to the rigging of the boats--collect the oars--harpooneers! the irons,    |
|the irons!--hoist the royals higher--a pull on all the sheets!--helm there!     |
|steady, steady for your life! I'll ten times girdle the unmeasured globe; yea   |
|and dive straight through it, but I'll slay him yet! "Great God! but for one    |
|single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never wilt thou capture   |
|him, old man--In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness.|
|Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from |
|under thee; thy evil shadow gone--all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:-- |
|what more wouldst thou have?--Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till    |
|he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea?    |
|Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,--Impiety and blasphemy  |
|to hunt him more!" "Starbuck, of late I've felt strangely moved to thee; ever   |
|since that hour we both saw--thou know'st what, in one another's eyes. But in   |
|this matter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this    |
|hand--a lipless, unfeatured blank. Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's |
|immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this   |
|ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou,  |
|underling! that thou obeyest mine.--Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut  |
|down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot.    |
|'Tis Ahab--his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon      |
|a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted     |
|frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, yell hear me crack;     |
|and till ye hear THAT, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe    |
|ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere  |
|they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to |
|sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick--two days he's floated--tomorrow will be   |
|the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more,--but only to spout his last! D'ye    |
|feel brave men, brave?" "As fearless fire," cried Stubb. "And as mechanical,"   |
|muttered Ahab. Then as the men went forward, he muttered on: "The things        |
|called omens! And yesterday I talked the same to Starbuck there, concerning my  |
|broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek to drive out of others' hearts what's     |
|clinched so fast in mine!--The Parsee--the Parsee!--gone, gone? and he was to go|
|before:--but still was to be seen again ere I could perish--How's that?--There's|
|a riddle now might baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line|
|of judges:--like a hawk's beak it pecks my brain. I'LL, I'LL solve it, though!" |
|When dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward. So once more the  |
|sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as on the previous night;      |
|only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the grindstone was heard till nearly |
|daylight, as the men toiled by lanterns in the complete and careful rigging of  |
|the spare boats and sharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime,    |
|of the broken keel of Ahab's wrecked craft the carpenter made him another       |
|leg; while still as on the night before, slouched Ahab stood fixed within his   |
|scuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its dial;   |
|sat due eastward for the earliest sun. The morning of the third day dawned      |
|fair and fresh, and once more the solitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was  |
|relieved by crowds of the daylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost  |
|every spar. "D'ye see him?" cried Ahab; but the whale was not yet in sight.     |
|"In his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that's all. Helm there;  |
|steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day again! were it    |
|a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning   |
|the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that   |
|world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks;  |
|he only feels, feels, feels; THAT'S tingling enough for mortal man! to think's  |
|audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a |
|coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too|
|much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm--frozen   |
|calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to    |
|ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and|
|heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow  |
|anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How   |
|the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails |
|lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere     |
|this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated |
|them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!--it's   |
|tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world.   |
|I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic|
|thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and      |
|bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind|
|that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even |
|Ahab is a braver thing--a nobler thing than THAT. Would now the wind but had a  |
|body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these |
|things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most|
|special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, |
|and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and gracious in the wind. |
|These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in|
|strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however  |
|the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies    |
|of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the   |
|eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these   |
|Trades, or something like them--something so unchangeable, and full as strong,  |
|blow my keeled soul along! To it! Aloft there! What d'ye see?" "Nothing, sir."  |
|"Nothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun! Aye, aye, |
|it must be so. I've oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye, he's chasing ME    |
|now; not I, HIM--that's bad; I might have known it, too. Fool! the lines--the   |
|harpoons he's towing. Aye, aye, I have run him by last night. About! about! Come|
|down, all of ye, but the regular look outs! Man the braces!" Steering as she    |
|had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Pequod's quarter, so that now being |
|pointed in the reverse direction, the braced ship sailed hard upon the breeze as|
|she rechurned the cream in her own white wake. "Against the wind he now steers  |
|for the open jaw," murmured Starbuck to himself, as he coiled the new-hauled    |
|main-brace upon the rail. "God keep us, but already my bones feel damp within   |
|me, and from the inside wet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in    |
|obeying him!" "Stand by to sway me up!" cried Ahab, advancing to the hempen     |
|basket. "We should meet him soon." "Aye, aye, sir," and straightway Starbuck    |
|did Ahab's bidding, and once more Ahab swung on high. A whole hour now passed;  |
|gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held long breaths with keen suspense.  |
|But at last, some three points off the weather bow, Ahab descried the spout     |
|again, and instantly from the three mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the  |
|tongues of fire had voiced it. "Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third    |
|time, Moby Dick! On deck there!--brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind's    |
|eye. He's too far off to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over   |
|that helmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But    |
|let me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there's time for    |
|that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and not changed a wink  |
|since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of Nantucket! The same!--the   |
|same!--the same to Noah as to me. There's a soft shower to leeward. Such lovely |
|leewardings! They must lead somewhere--to something else than common land, more |
|palmy than the palms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, |
|then; the better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old mast-head!|
|What's this?--green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No such green     |
|weather stains on Ahab's head! There's the difference now between man's old     |
|age and matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our    |
|hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a leg, that's all. By heaven this|
|dead wood has the better of my live flesh every way. I can't compare with it;   |
|and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of   |
|the most vital stuff of vital fathers. What's that he said? he should still go  |
|before me, my pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at   |
|the bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and all night  |
|I've been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye, aye, like many more   |
|thou told'st direful truth as touching thyself, O Parsee; but, Ahab, there thy  |
|shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head--keep a good eye upon the whale, the while |
|I'm gone. We'll talk to-morrow, nay, to-night, when the white whale lies down   |
|there, tied by head and tail." He gave the word; and still gazing round him, was|
|steadily lowered through the cloven blue air to the deck. In due time the boats |
|were lowered; but as standing in his shallop's stern, Ahab just hovered upon the|
|point of the descent, he waved to the mate,--who held one of the tackle-ropes   |
|on deck--and bade him pause. "Starbuck!" "Sir?" "For the third time my soul's   |
|ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck." "Aye, sir, thou wilt have it so."      |
|"Some ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing, Starbuck!"  |
|"Truth, sir: saddest truth." "Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some |
|at the full of the flood;--and I feel now like a billow that's all one crested  |
|comb, Starbuck. I am old;--shake hands with me, man." Their hands met; their    |
|eyes fastened; Starbuck's tears the glue. "Oh, my captain, my captain!--noble   |
|heart--go not--go not!--see, it's a brave man that weeps; how great the agony   |
|of the persuasion then!" "Lower away!"--cried Ahab, tossing the mate's arm from |
|him. "Stand by the crew!" In an instant the boat was pulling round close under  |
|the stern. "The sharks! the sharks!" cried a voice from the low cabin-window    |
|there; "O master, my master, come back!" But Ahab heard nothing; for his own    |
|voice was high-lifted then; and the boat leaped on. Yet the voice spake true;   |
|for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when numbers of sharks, seemingly rising|
|from out the dark waters beneath the hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of |
|the oars, every time they dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the  |
|boat with their bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats|
|in those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them in the    |
|same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of marching regiments   |
|in the east. But these were the first sharks that had been observed by the      |
|Pequod since the White Whale had been first descried; and whether it was that   |
|Ahab's crew were all such tiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh    |
|more musky to the senses of the sharks--a matter sometimes well known to affect |
|them,--however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without molesting    |
|the others. "Heart of wrought steel!" murmured Starbuck gazing over the side,   |
|and following with his eyes the receding boat--"canst thou yet ring boldly to   |
|that sight?--lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them,     |
|open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?--For when three     |
|days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure the first is the  |
|morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening and the end of that     |
|thing--be that end what it may. Oh! my God! what is this that shoots through me,|
|and leaves me so deadly calm, yet expectant,--fixed at the top of a shudder!    |
|Future things swim before me, as in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past  |
|is somehow grown dim. Mary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I |
|seem to see but thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem   |
|clearing; but clouds sweep between--Is my journey's end coming? My legs feel    |
|faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,--beats it yet? Stir  |
|thyself, Starbuck!--stave it off--move, move! speak aloud!--Mast-head there!    |
|See ye my boy's hand on the hill?--Crazed;--aloft there!--keep thy keenest      |
|eye upon the boats:-- mark well the whale!--Ho! again!--drive off that hawk!    |
|see! he pecks--he tears the vane"--pointing to the red flag flying at the       |
|main-truck--"Ha! he soars away with it!--Where's the old man now? see'st thou   |
|that sight, oh Ahab!--shudder, shudder!" The boats had not gone very far, when  |
|by a signal from the mast-heads--a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the     |
|whale had sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on  |
|his way a little sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the   |
|profoundest silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered against the   |
|opposing bow. "Drive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads|
|drive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and no hearse |
|can be mine:--and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!" Suddenly the waters around    |
|them slowly swelled in broad circles; then quickly upheaved, as if sideways     |
|sliding from a submerged berg of ice, swiftly rising to the surface. A low      |
|rumbling sound was heard; a subterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; |
|as bedraggled with trailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot   |
|lengthwise, but obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of     |
|mist, it hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping back |
|into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for an instant   |
|like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of flakes, leaving the  |
|circling surface creamed like new milk round the marble trunk of the whale.     |
|"Give way!" cried Ahab to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to the      |
|attack; but maddened by yesterday's fresh irons that corroded in him, Moby Dick |
|seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell from heaven. The wide   |
|tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad white forehead, beneath the     |
|transparent skin, looked knitted together; as head on, he came churning his tail|
|among the boats; and once more flailed them apart; spilling out the irons and   |
|lances from the two mates' boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of  |
|their bows, but leaving Ahab's almost without a scar. While Daggoo and Queequeg |
|were stopping the strained planks; and as the whale swimming out from them,     |
|turned, and showed one entire flank as he shot by them again; at that moment    |
|a quick cry went up. Lashed round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in     |
|the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the  |
|involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; |
|his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old     |
|Ahab. The harpoon dropped from his hand. "Befooled, befooled!"--drawing in a    |
|long lean breath--"Aye, Parsee! I see thee again.--Aye, and thou goest before;  |
|and this, THIS then is the hearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to   |
|the last letter of thy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the    |
|ship! those boats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to |
|me; if not, Ahab is enough to die--Down, men! the first thing that but offers   |
|to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are not other men,  |
|but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.--Where's the whale? gone down again?"  |
|But he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the corpse he|
|bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter had been but a stage |
|in his leeward voyage, Moby Dick was now again steadily swimming forward; and   |
|had almost passed the ship,--which thus far had been sailing in the contrary    |
|direction to him, though for the present her headway had been stopped. He seemed|
|swimming with his utmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own    |
|straight path in the sea. "Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even |
|now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, |
|that madly seekest him!" Setting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was   |
|swiftly impelled to leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Ahab was |
|sliding by the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck's face as he  |
|leaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and follow him,   |
|not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards, he saw Tashtego,    |
|Queequeg, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three mast-heads; while the       |
|oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats which had but just been hoisted    |
|to the side, and were busily at work in repairing them. One after the other,    |
|through the port-holes, as he sped, he also caught flying glimpses of Stubb and |
|Flask, busying themselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he  |
|saw all this; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers    |
|seemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking that the  |
|vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to Tashtego, who had  |
|just gained that perch, to descend again for another flag, and a hammer and     |
|nails, and so nail it to the mast. Whether fagged by the three days' running    |
|chase, and the resistance to his swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or     |
|whether it was some latent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, |
|the White Whale's way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly|
|nearing him once more; though indeed the whale's last start had not been so long|
|a one as before. And still as Ahab glided over the waves the unpitying sharks   |
|accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to the boat; and so continually    |
|bit at the plying oars, that the blades became jagged and crunched, and left    |
|small splinters in the sea, at almost every dip. "Heed them not! those teeth    |
|but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull on! 'tis the better rest, the shark's  |
|jaw than the yielding water." "But at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow     |
|smaller and smaller!" "They will last long enough! pull on!--But who can        |
|tell"--he muttered--"whether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on      |
|Ahab?--But pull on! Aye, all alive, now--we near him. The helm! take the helm!  |
|let me pass,"--and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward to the bows  |
|of the still flying boat. At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran  |
|ranging along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of    |
|its advance--as the whale sometimes will--and Ahab was fairly within the smoky  |
|mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great,|
|Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with body arched back, and |
|both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the poise, he darted his fierce iron, and   |
|his far fiercer curse into the hated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the |
|socket, as if sucked into a morass, Moby Dick sideways writhed; spasmodically   |
|rolled his nigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so    |
|suddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated part of    |
|the gunwale to which he then clung, Ahab would once more have been tossed into  |
|the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen--who foreknew not the precise instant  |
|of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for its effects--these were flung    |
|out; but so fell, that, in an instant two of them clutched the gunwale again,   |
|and rising to its level on a combing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard     |
|again; the third man helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming. |
|Almost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated, instantaneous     |
|swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering sea. But when Ahab      |
|cried out to the steersman to take new turns with the line, and hold it so;     |
|and commanded the crew to turn round on their seats, and tow the boat up to     |
|the mark; the moment the treacherous line felt that double strain and tug, it   |
|snapped in the empty air! "What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!--'tis whole    |
|again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him!" Hearing the tremendous rush of the       |
|sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay;|
|but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship;    |
|seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it--it    |
|may be--a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing   |
|prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam. Ahab staggered; his hand     |
|smote his forehead. "I grow blind; hands! stretch out before me that I may yet  |
|grope my way. Is't night?" "The whale! The ship!" cried the cringing oarsmen.   |
|"Oars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too  |
|late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I see: the ship! the   |
|ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?" But as the oarsmen violently  |
|forced their boat through the sledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten   |
|bow-ends of two planks burst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily |
|disabled boat lay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew, |
|trying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water. Meantime, for that  |
|one beholding instant, Tashtego's mast-head hammer remained suspended in his    |
|hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as with a plaid, then streamed itself |
|straight out from him, as his own forward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and     |
|Stubb, standing upon the bowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming      |
|monster just as soon as he. "The whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all    |
|ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he       |
|must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say--ye fools, the jaw! the jaw!    |
|Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh,    |
|Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again!    |
|He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose     |
|duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now!" "Stand not by me,    |
|but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too,   |
|sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or     |
|kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed |
|upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood!     |
|I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call      |
|ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that,    |
|I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh!    |
|thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O  |
|Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most  |
|mouldy and over salted death, though;--cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, |
|for one red cherry ere we die!" "Cherries? I only wish that we were where they  |
|grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not,    |
|few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up." From the ship's bows,  |
|nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers, bits of plank, lances, and    |
|harpoons, mechanically retained in their hands, just as they had darted from    |
|their various employments; all their enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which|
|from side to side strangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad     |
|band of overspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution,   |
|swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all      |
|that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the    |
|ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their    |
|faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their |
|bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain    |
|torrents down a flume. "The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab   |
|from the boat; "its wood could only be American!" Diving beneath the settling   |
|ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly  |
|shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of     |
|Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent. "I turn my body from the sun. |
|What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires    |
|of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and    |
|haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, |
|and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked    |
|captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness  |
|lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now    |
|in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber    |
|of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale;   |
|to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's   |
|sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one     |
|common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while    |
|still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the |
|spear!" The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting  |
|velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; |
|he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly |
|as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the   |
|crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final   |
|end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the   |
|sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood   |
|still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through |
|dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata|
|Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or  |
|fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still     |
|maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles       |
|seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every |
|lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one     |
|vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. But as the last   |
|whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian    |
|at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together   |
|with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical    |
|coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;--at that instant, |
|a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act  |
|of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that|
|tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among    |
|the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now   |
|chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; |
|and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath,  |
|in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven,     |
|with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole   |
|captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like   |
|Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along|
|with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew screaming over the |
|yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all    |
|collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand |
|years ago. Epilogue "AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE" Job. The drama's |
|done. Why then here does any one step forth?--Because one did survive the       |
|wreck. It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom the  |
|Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that bowsman assumed   |
|the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three men were tossed  |
|from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating on the margin of |
|the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the halfspent suction of the   |
|sunk ship reached me, I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. |
|When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then,     |
|and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that   |
|slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that    |
|vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of    |
|its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force,  |
|the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my |
|side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated   |
|on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with   |
|padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On   |
|the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was      |
|the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing     |
|children, only found another orphan.                                            |
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